Election recounting to begin Friday to the cost of $800K

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein asked a judge Monday to force a hand recount of almost 3 million ballots cast in Wisconsin after the state Elections Commission rejected her call to do that.

Green Party nominee Jill Stein received 51,463 votes in MI and has signaled she plans to ask for the Board of State Canvassers for a recount.

However, there has been “no evidence produced to substantiate” Trump’s claims, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Chris Thomas, director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections, said the recount would begin as early as Friday to meet a December 13 deadline. Jill Stein, who has led the push for recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and MI, appeared in court Monday, hoping to kickstart a statewide hand recount. If the results in those states were overturned, their combined electoral votes would swing the election to Clinton.

The Clinton campaign, or whatever remains of it, doesn’t hold out any real hope that the outcome will change, but supports the recounts, on the ground the public ought to be assured of the integrity of the process.

But the bigger reason potentially could be: this makes Jill Stein and the Green Party relevant.

Professor Rothstein says Americans can expect legal battles throughout the duration of the recount process, specifically because two of the three potentially challenging states have republican governors. She says she wants voters to “be sure we have a fair, secure and accurate voting system”. Trump said on Twitter.

A progressive activist in Wisconsin who wanted to see Clinton elected as much as anyone said he also heard nothing about possible irregularities until Stein’s recount petition.

It’s a way for Stein “to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount”, the president-elect said in a statement Saturday.

Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said in a tweet that Dane County will be hand counting the recount.

Citing the results of a 2011 statewide recount that changed only 300 votes, Elections Commission chairman Mark Thomsen, a Democrat, said this presidential recount is unlikely to change Trump’s win in the state.

Stein, who only got 1.1 percent of the vote in MI, has to cover a portion of the hand recount of 4.8 million votes. He singled out Virginia, California and New Hampshire as places where “serious voter fraud” occurred, but offered no evidence for his allegations. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson got 3.2 percent, and Stein got 1.1 percent.

Heading into the 2016 presidential election, the consensus was that #Hillary Clinton would not just become the first female president in United States’ history, but that her win would be so dominating that Democrats would end up also regaining control of the Senate.