Hillary Clinton’s Campaign to Participate in Wisconsin Vote Recount
Hillary Clinton’s campaign will participate in a recount of election votes in Wisconsin, a lawyer said.
The recount was initiated by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who is also seeking recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, citing “statistical anomalies”.
Election results would need to be overturned in all three states to alter the outcome of the election.
Donald Trump, who narrowly won Wisconsin, called the move a “scam”.
He said it was a way for Dr. Jill Stein – who is funding the recount through public donations – to “fill her coffers with money”.
“The results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused,” the president-elect said.
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Hillary Clinton campaign’s general counsel, Marc Elias, said the Clinton team and outside experts had been “conducting an extensive review of election results, searching for any signs that the voting process had been tampered with”.
Marc Elias said there was no evidence to conclude the election was sabotaged, but “we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported”.
He noted that the number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of the three states - Michigan - ”well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount”.
However, Marc Elias said the campaign would join in “on principle” in the Midwestern states if Dr. Jill Stein follows through on her promise.
Jill Stein reportedly wants to be sure computer hackers did not skew the poll in favor of Donald Trump.
Concerns over possible Russian interference had been expressed in the run-up to the vote.
The US government has said Russian state actors were behind hacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
In a statement on November 25, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said it had received two recount petitions from the Jill Stein campaign and from Rocky Roque De La Fuente, a businessman who ran unsuccessfully to be the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.
Administrator Michael Haas said the count would begin in the week after Jill Stein’s campaign paid the fee, which the commission was still calculating.
Jill Stein’s campaign needs to raise millions of dollars to cover the fees for the vote recount in all three states.
According to her website, over $5.8 million has already been raised toward a $7 million target. It says this is enough to fund the recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Voting rights lawyers John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, who urged candidates to request recounts, have said the “physical evidence” that could signal a cyber-attack needs to be closely analyzed.
However, J. Alex Halderman said the fact that the results in the three states were different from what polls predicted was “probably not” down to hacking.
The deadline for the petition for the recount in Wisconsin was November 25, while Pennsylvania’s deadline is November 28, and Michigan’s is November 30.
Michigan is yet to declare its final results.
Wisconsin provides only 10 electors in the crucial electoral college that gave Donald Trump victory in November 8 election.
Wins there for Hillary Clinton, as well as in Michigan (16 electoral votes) and Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes), would have clinched the presidency for the Democrat.