Although far removed from the petition filings and court cases that have led to the ongoing statewide recount, officials with Cass County will soon participate in the effort.

County officials begin their ballot recount at 9 a.m. Wednesday, joining 12 other municipalities — including neighboring Berrien and St. Joseph counties — whose re-tabulation efforts are expected to also kick off that day. Their efforts will contribute to the overall recount of all ballots cast in Michigan during the Nov. 8 presidential election, an effort that began Monday.

The Cass County recount will take place at the Mathews Library and Conference Center, located on the Dowagiac campus of Southwestern Michigan College. Twenty-four people, divided into 12 teams of two, will recount — by hand — all ballots cast in the county’s voting precincts during the general election, said Cass County Clerk/Register Monica Kennedy.

“We have 24 precincts in the county,” Kennedy said. “We expect each team to complete recounts of two precincts each, though we see how everything goes, as some teams may complete their work faster than others.”

The sealed boxes containing the ballots from each precinct will be delivered to the location earlier that morning. Prior the recount, the boxes will be unsealed and the ballots counted, to ensure that figure matches the number of ballots that was recorded as cast in that precinct on Election Day, Kennedy said.

Once that is done, the people conducting the recount — who are all either local clerks or certified election inspectors — will manually check each ballot.

They will first see if a vote was cast for one of the six candidates on the ballot for U.S. president. If not, the inspector will check if the voter chose to vote straight party instead.

Once they determine which presidential candidate the ballot was cast for it, the document will be placed with other ballots cast for that particular candidate.

At the end of the process, the ballots will be sorted into stacks of 25, with the team counting the amount of ballots for each presidential candidate. These numbers will be given to members of the Cass County Board of Canvassers, who are supervising the recount, who will enter the numbers into a spreadsheet and certify the recount.

“Our goal is to finish on Wednesday,” Kennedy said. “We will work as hard as we can. If we have to work until 7 or 8 p.m. that night, we will stick it out to get it done.”

Officials with the State of Michigan are also expected to be present, Kennedy said.

In addition, representatives with the local Republican, Democrat and Green parties are expected to oversee the recount, watching the teams conducting the counting. The officials have the ability to challenge whether a particular ballot should be counted for a candidate, with any contested ballots set aside. Once every other ballot has been counted, the county board of canvassers will handle the challenges, voting on which candidates the contested ballots should count towards.

Joining Cass County in the Mathews Library Wednesday will be officials with St. Joseph County, who will be conducting their recount effort at the location as well.

The local recounts are part of the statewide effort initiated last week by Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein, who — in spite of receiving a fraction of the state’s vote — is requesting the recount in order to test the integrity of the state’s voting systems, she has said in interviews.

Republican nominee and President-Elect Donald Trump won the vote in Michigan Nov. 8, narrowly defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes. Trump secured 16 electoral college electors for winning the state, receiving 306 electoral votes overall to secure the presidency.

In spite of several challenges to Stein’s petition, including by lawyers representing Trump and from Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuettte, a federal judge ruled Monday that the recount effort must begin this week, and must be completed by Dec. 13, a few days before the electoral college formally votes for the next U.S. president Dec. 19.

The public is invited to watch Wednesday’s recount from a seating area set up by the county.