Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate in both the 2012 and 2016 elections, has a filed a petition with the Election Commission of the state of Wisconsin for a vote recount in order to combat the official result of Donald Trump’s victory. Stein believes that in Wisconsin and two other states, the votes were counted wrong and Hillary Clinton is the true President-Elect.
Wisconsin is the first of three states for the recount
Wisconsin had the earliest deadline of Stein’s three planned recount states for filing a petition against the election results, and was therefore the first one to whom she filed a petition, just ninety minutes before the deadline.
Stein’s petition should lift the spirits of Hillary Clinton supporters, who were devastated by Trump’s win.
The other two states in which Stein is calling for a recount are Pennsylvania, where Trump was recorded as the victor but she believes Hillary was the true victor, and Michigan, where Trump is rumored to have the majority vote but it won’t be officially confirmed until Monday. These three states are being referred to as the Democratic Party’s “firewall” that stood between Hillary and the Presidency. If she got those states, she would have had enough electoral votes to take the election.
The deadlines Stein has to meet for the other states are Monday for Pennsylvania and Wednesday for Michigan.
This comes after a team of data analysts looking into the election’s results suspected a cyberattack tweaked the outcome, as they noticed Hillary got considerably less votes in counties in Wisconsin that collect votes using voting machines rather than paper ballots, and so the votes could have theoretically been changed if the machines were hacked into.
Clinton was 22,177 votes behind Trump in Wisconsin
As it currently stands, the Wisconsin Election Commission counts 1,404,000 votes for Trump and 1,381,823 votes for Clinton. As of yet, the analysts have no proof of hacking, but this margin is so slim, and the anomalies noted regarding the voting machines suggest foul play, which has led to Stein’s petition.
Stein has managed to raise over $5.25 million in donations to fund the recounts. This is the most ever raised by a third-party candidate in history (probably because the recounts aren’t for a third-party candidate, they’re for Hillary, the Democratic candidate). Michael Haas, Administrator for the Wisconsin Election Commission, has estimated the cost of the recounts to be at least $520,000, as 1.5 million votes are needed to be recounted.
If any of the Presidential candidates do not agree with the outcome of Stein's Wisconsin recount (which Trump surely won’t if Clinton is found to have won), they will be given five business days to legally contest the results.
