Clinton team to take part in vote recount

Wisconsin, one of three battleground USA states won by President-elect Donald Trump, will undergo votes recounting after it received two petitions in this regard from a third-party candidate who alleged that Russian hackers may have infiltrated voting systems.

Donald Trump panned recent vote recount efforts, led by the Green Party’s Jill Stein in three critical states, as a “scam” meant to “fill [Stein’s] coffers with money” after the general election.

On Saturday she told CNN that “going into this election, and throughout the election, we saw hacking taking place all over the place, of state voter databases, of the democratic party s vote database, of private e-mail accounts”.

In Wisconsin, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 27,257 votes; in Pennsylvania by 70,010 votes; and in MI by 10,704 votes. Elias said in his statement that Clinton campaign would follow suit in participating in those subsequent recounts if Stein’s efforts came to fruition.

She added that not only are some of the voting equipment around the country unreliable, but state governments have lost trust in certain machines over the years.

However to alter the result of the November 8 election, results would have to be overturned in all three states. He said the Kremlin had probably hoped to raise such doubts through its hacking attacks during the election, including on the Democratic National Committee email system.

Stein has cited unspecified “anomalies” as grounds to mount a challenge to the Nov 8 election results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“He himself said it was a rigged election unless he won it”, she said.

In an interview with NPR’s All Things Considered on Saturday, Stein said her goal in pushing for a recount wasn’t to change the results of the election but to make sure US elections are “fair and reliable”. And with the recount petition already filed in Wisconsin, and MI and Pennsylvania’s deadlines coming up next week, it’s dominating a fair amount of attention. Mark Elias, who’s provided legal counsel for the Clinton campaign, has indicated they don’t expect the recount to change the outcome of the election.

The push to recount the votes was spearheaded by Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein, who is also seeking recounts in MI and Pennsylvania. The process must be completed by December 13.

On Saturday, the Clinton campaign revealed in a posting on Medium, the online publishing platform, that although it has found no evidence of any external manipulation or tampering of voting systems in any of the states, it will participate in the process that the Green Party started. Sound off in today’s WND Poll on Stein’s campaign for recounts in 3 swing states.

The Wisconsin filing fee is $1.1 million, and the $500,000 filing fee has been raised for a recount in Pennsylvania, the site said.

US President-elect Donald Trump has called a request for a recount of votes in Wisconsin a “scam” by the Green Party. The campaign is aware that the odds of a recount reversing the vote in any state are slim, he said.

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and MI were battleground states where Trump edged out Clinton by relatively thin margins.