Trump officially wins MI amid recount demands

Hillary Clinton asked a judge for permission Tuesday to join Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s lawsuit demanding a hand recount of the election in Wisconsin, a process that may cost Stein about $400,000 more than she anticipated.

“The recount effort has resulted in serious questions regarding the motivations of the recount that threatens to damage the standing and reputation of the Green party, its supporters, and activists”, he wrote. “We must recount the votes so we can build trust in our election system”. Federal law requires the state finish the recount by December 13 and county clerks will have to work overtime to finish the recount in time, the Elections Commission said.

President-elect Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes out of almost 4.8 million ballots cast in MI, but Stein alleges that irregularities and the possibility that vote scanning devices could have been hacked call the results into question. It is the last of three states Stein has expressed intent to request recounts in, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. She believes that hacking and “human error” could’ve played a role in the presidential vote tally in those decisive states, which went to Trump.

State officials said they expect the recount to uphold Trump’s win-but Stein’s efforts have highlighted widespread voter outrage at the election results. He brought along a check for $973,250, which represents the $125 per precinct that Stein must pay for the recount. Trump claimed that he would have won the popular vote resoundingly had millions of non-citizens not voted illegally.

The state Elections Commission is preparing to launch the recount at Stein’s request on Thursday.

But the call for help in MI would seem to suggest that the Clinton campaign has a bit more hope than Elias let on. Instead, the commission voted to allow each of the state’s 72 counties to determine how to conduct the recount.

The next deadline that has to be met in order for a vote recount to take place in Wisconsin is set for Tuesday afternoon, when the two third-party candidates who are pushing for the recount of the general election votes have to submit payment.

Elections administrators called that “good news” for 20 or so county clerks who want to use machines to count ballots. She called on Stein to give up on the MI recount. “Unless we actually look, we would never know”.

Trump edged Clinton by some 71,000 votes, or about 1 percent, in Pennsylvania. After a third count by hand, Democrat Christine Gregoire was declared the victor by 133 votes.