Michigan Moving Forward With Presidential Election Recount

It added: “Although Stein had the ability to request a recount from the moment the polls closed on November 9, 2016, she waited an additional three weeks-until the last possible minute under MI law-to do so”. It cited the US Supreme Court’s Bush vs. Gore decision, which ended the 2000 election and a recount process in Florida, as legal precedent. Lawsuits have been filed to stop it.

Republican lawyers filed a motion in the Keystone State on Friday saying Stein’s recount request endangers the state’s ability to certify its electors by the federal deadline.

In Bucks County, for example, Hillary Clinton’s lead over Trump grew from 1,988 votes on the night of November 8 to 2,699 votes as of Friday.

The Trump team and the Michigan attorney general are asking the Michigan Supreme Court to hear their cases.

Republican legal efforts are underway to stop the recounting of USA presidential ballots in three states where President-elect Donald Trump scored narrow victories last month.

The recount has already begun in Wisconsin but political action committee Great America PAC, that supports Trump, sued in federal court on Thursday seeking to block the recount there.

An updated count Friday by state election officials shows Trump’s lead over Democrat Hillary Clinton has shrunk to 49,000, from 71,000. Her campaign paid Wisconsin a $3.5 million fee for a recount in a state where Trump leads Clinton by 23,000 votes. It is still shy of Pennsylvania’s 0.5% trigger for an automatic statewide recount. Trump’s Pennsylvania victory was crucial to capturing the White House.

Trump campaign’s own attorneys have moved to block the recount efforts in Pennsylvania and MI, according to court papers in those states, Reuters reported.

The recount continued Friday in the state’s seventy-two counties, after a Thursday start.

The vote was 2-2, right along party lines, two republicans and two democrats.

Blocking the recount, he wrote, would also “very likely prevent defendants from completing the recount by the deadline”.

The Wisconsin Republican Party has also filed a complaint over the recount effort in that state, it said. “And even if that could be overlooked, Stein’s request would have to be denied because no recount can be reliably competed in the time required by state and federal law” (to meet the Electoral College’s deadline). No hearing had been scheduled as of Friday afternoon.

Few people expect the recounts to reverse the outcome of the presidential race.

Mr Trump and his backers say democracy has already spoken and have started legal action in a bid to prevent recounts from taking place in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and MI. The Wisconsin recount is underway.

Stein issued a statement blasting Trump’s petition to stop the recount, calling it a “shameful” and “outrageous” attempt to verify the accuracy, security and integrity of the election.

“She has no hope – zero hope – of actually emerging as the victor once a recount is over, and so therefore”, Pluta said, “[they say] she doesn’t qualify as a legitimately aggrieved candidate who can request a recount, that she’s just too far behind”. It also would be conducted by hand, as Stein requested. The election board in each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties must vote to certify its results before the December 13 federal deadline, although it is not clear what would happen if the deadline isn’t met.

Republicans have said a MI recount would cost taxpayers far more than the $973,000 Stein must pay when filing her recount petition.

Elections officials in all three states have expressed confidence in the election results, despite Trump’s narrow victories.