Michigan recount over; Pennsylvania sets hearing

“The issues that Plaintiffs raise are serious indeed”, wrote U.S. District Court Judge Mark Goldsmith in his ruling issued about 7:45 p.m. Wednesday.

Earlier Wednesday, the MI elections board voted, 3-1, to end the recount if Goldsmith extinguished his earlier order.

“In a huge victory for MI taxpayers and the rule of law, this recount is stopped”.

“The average voter in Pennsylvania has had to go through incredible lengths in order to have the assurance that their vote is being counted and being counted accurately”, Stein said after the hearing.

The recount’s biggest developments Tuesday were in MI, where the day started with the growing revelation that thousands of ballots in the counties most solidly behind Clinton were being deemed ineligible for the recount.

Stein, who received about 1 percent of the vote in all three states, says her intent is to verify the accuracy of the vote. Stein has also hired lawyers to fight legal battles in all three states. Stein is also the driving force behind recount efforts in hotly contested Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein requested the recount as part of a broader effort to recount votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states where Trump narrowly beat Clinton.

Stein raised almost $10 million to back recounts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, key electoral college states where Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton. The removals come two days after a federal judge ended the recount that began Monday.

Stein called the MI ruling “disheartening” and in a statement, her attorneys said they were “deeply disappointed” but that they “are not backing down from this fight”.

Stein’s attorneys have already appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court to have the earlier Court of Appeals decision overturned.

A federal appeals court won’t stop the recount of Michigan’s presidential votes.

Officials with the Brown County Clerk’s office say they anticipate finishing their recount Wednesday night. Hillary Clinton has joined in the recount, and Donald Trump has labeled it a scam. Attorneys for Trump argue that Stein has no right to a recount because she finished fourth. “Wisconsin’s Election Supervisor Ross Hein said on 8 November that “.to access the [election] equipment, you would have to actually get your hands on it”, because the machines do not connect to the internet!

When asked about the apparent contradiction between recount practices in Detroit and surrounding counties, and Michigan election law, Fred Woodhams, spokesman for the Michigan Department of State, replied, “I want to check in with elections leadership about it”.

By the end of the fifth day, and after more than 1 million votes were recounted, Trump grew his lead by just over two dozen votes.

The recount began in some MI counties Monday and others on Tuesday as it raised concerns about some voting irregularities and worries over malfunctioning optical scanners.

A Friday federal court hearing is scheduled in a separate Green Party request. District Judge James Peterson dismissed the request and said the recount would continue, according to local news media.

The appeals court told the MI elections board to reconsider Stein’s petition and reject it. That’s not an option in Wayne County, where a four-member board of canvassers must certify millions of votes, not the thousands cast in outstate counties.

A judge has rejected a Green Party request to allow software experts to inspect Philadelphia’s election systems for evidence they were hacked. In those counties, Trump gained 105 votes and Clinton dropped 41 votes.

Monona recounted all of its ballots December 1. Judge James Peterson refused to grant their request Friday, noting the recount is almost complete and there’s virtually no chance the recount will change the results of the election. That means counting some ballot boxes, each containing hundreds of the paper slips, two and three times before even beginning to determine for whom each ballot was cast, all under the patient eyes of volunteer observers from three presidential campaigns.