Republican elector chooses to resign rather than vote for Trump

The Clinton campaign has indicated support for Ms. Stein’s efforts, though it’s unclear how active of a role Mrs. Clinton or her team would play. “I will not let you down”, Trump told him during the campaign.

Mr Trump won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and as of Wednesday, held a lead of nearly 11,000 votes in MI, with the results awaiting state certification on Monday.

Stein – who received just a tiny piece of the vote in Michigan – plans to ask for a recount there on Wednesday, according to Mark Brewer, former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party and lawyer for Stein.

Stein, who won about 1 percent of the national vote, has said she wants a recount to guarantee the integrity of the US voting system, a push that came after some experts raised the possibility that hacks could have affected the results.

Ms Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but Mr Trump won 290 electoral votes to Ms Clinton’s 232, not counting MI. Michigan’s Secretary of State announced that official 2016 election results will be certified on Monday, November 28.

Earlier he described an impending recount of votes in Wisconsin as a “scam” and said the results of the presidential election should be respected instead of being challenged or “abused”.

He said his office has already started looking at possible locations, as the number of people present for the recount could be in the hundreds. “As we have noted before, we remained confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out on election day”.

The latest totals show Hillary Clinton leading Trump in the popular vote by more than 2 million.

Trump was responding to the Clinton campaign’s announcement that they intend to back the statewide presidential election recount effort taking place in Wisconsin, which was led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

“We’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them, and that is what must be expected of anyone standing on during a general election”.

“We must recount the votes so we can build trust in our election system”. Unlike in Wisconsin, a recount can only be required in Pennsylvania two ways: Either three or more voters in each precinct must request that a recount be done, or Stein must file a lawsuit calling for a recount state-wide. Thomsen says “To say that it’s not being fair or people are counting illegal votes, from my vantage point is an insult to people running our elections”.

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law professor, said that although recounts are “entirely within the law”, Stein’s effort is probably aimed more at “trying to gain attention and establish herself as a national player”.

And Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, said that while the president-elect is not “seeking methods and ways to persecute and prosecute Hillary Clinton”, Trump would probably be “open to listening” should any new findings against her emerge from future investigations.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted Monday to proceed with a recount and will bill Stein and other interested campaigns for the costs, estimated to be around $1 million.

Stein’s Wisconsin recount request, and lawsuit, included an affidavit from University of MI computer scientist J. Alex Halderman who said a hand recount is the only way to determine whether there could have been a cyberattack that affected the results. There’s no evidence voter results were hacked or electronic voting machines were compromised.

“Nevertheless, county clerks have been gearing up to complete this recount under a very challenging (Dec. 13) deadline”, she said.