MADISON, Wis. — The recount of the presidential election in Wisconsin’s two most heavily Democratic counties began Friday with President Donald Trump’s campaign seeking to discard tens of thousands of absentee ballots that it alleged should not have been counted.

Trump’s three objections attempting to discard the ballots were denied by the three-member Dane County Board of Canvassers, twice on bipartisan votes. Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said he expected the campaign was building a record before filing a lawsuit.

Joe Biden won Wisconsin by 20,600 votes and carried Dane and Milwaukee counties by a 2-to-1 margin. Trump only paid for recounts in those two counties, not in the 70 others, 58 of which he won.

There’s no precedent for a recount overturning a deficit as large as Trump’s in Wisconsin, so his strategy is widely seen as seeking to build a case to take to court.

His team on Friday sought to have ballots discarded where election clerks filled in missing address information on the certification envelope where the ballot is inserted; any absentee ballot where a voter declared themselves to be “indefinitely confined” under the law; and any absentee ballot where there was not a written application on file, including roughly 69,000 that were cast in-person during the two weeks before Election Day.