Green Party files for Wisconsin recount, audit

It didn’t happen in person, but Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein electronically sent her petition for a recount to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Stein said that she wants the recounts to take place just to see if “there has been trouble”, because they won’t know for sure unless people look.

Stein, who earned little more than 1 percent of the national vote, formally requested a Wisconsin recount Friday afternoon, vowing to do the same in the coming days in MI and Pennsylvania.

Stein’s campaign has been raising money through online appeals since Tuesday to cover the costs of recounts, with $5.2 million raised as of Friday afternoon.

Stein filed the recount petition about 90 minutes before the Friday afternoon deadline.

If all three states recount and flip to Hillary Clinton, it could give the Democrat the electoral votes needed to win the White House, but it is still a long shot.

Unofficial vote tallies in the three states show GOP nominee Donald Trump won MI by fewer than 12,000 votes, Wisconsin by fewer than 30,000 votes and Pennsylvania by fewer than 70,000 votes. Mr Trump beat Mrs Clinton in Pennsylvania by 70,010 votes, in MI by 10,704 votes and in Wisconsin by 27,257 votes. “The objective here is to establish voting integrity, to verify our votes, and to ensure that in this election and going forward that we can count on the accuracy and the security and the veracity of our votes”. The results were counted and results provided on November 9; however, the state then canvasses all counties which was not complete until November 23. These concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified, Stein said in a Wednesday statement.

George Martin, a member of the Wisconsin Green Party’s coordinating council, says Stein’s campaign will file the request by the state’s 5 p.m. Friday deadline. Unofficial results released by Michigan’s secretary of state showed Trump has a lead of almost 11,000 votes.

The campaign stresses that the recounts are not to change the outcome of the results but are rather a check and balance on the process of counting votes.

Wisconsin could be at risk of missing a December 13 deadline to certify its 10 electoral votes if municipal clerks can’t complete an expected recount by then.

The Wisconsin Election Commission has asked municipal clerks to estimate their costs for a recount. Without Michigan, Stein would likely not have received the amount of attention from Clinton supporters that she is now receiving for her voter integrity efforts.

“The commission is reviewing state law to determine when that money would be due”.

While the election was close in Wisconsin, there’s no actual evidence of hacking or tampering there, and the statistical variances that alarmed cybersecurity researchers are explainable by demographic shifts.