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27-11-2016 02:17 AM |
USA: Recounts sought out by Green Party's Jill Stein upon suspicion of vote tampering
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WASHINGTON—Representatives from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign plan to participate in the effort to recount ballots in three states that provided Republican Donald Trump his margin of victory, an attorney for the Democratic presidential candidate said.
In a blog entry posted on Saturday, the general counsel for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, Marc Elias, said that it was important for the campaign to be represented in any legal proceedings and public monitoring stemming from recount efforts launched by Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
“Now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,” Mr. Elias wrote, adding that the campaign would also participate in planned recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan if they move forward.
“We do so fully aware that the number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states — Michigan — well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount. But regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself,” Mr. Elias wrote.
Ms. Stein, the Green Party’s nominee for president, announced this week that she would be pushing for statewide recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, citing the work of a prominent computer scientist who suggested a theoretical way that vote tallies could have been hacked or manipulated.
No evidence of such tampering has been found so far, but a recount of paper ballots and forensic audit of electronic voting machines could put to rest concerns about irregularities and tampering, the Stein campaign argues.
The Obama administration on Saturday said that elections were “free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.”
“The federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election Day. As we have noted before, we remained confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out on Election Day,” said a senior administration official on Saturday.
Mr. Trump said in a statement that “the people have spoken and the election is over.”
“All three states were won by large numbers of voters, especially Pennsylvania, which was won by more than 70,000 votes,” Mr. Trump said. “This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused.”
Ms. Stein’s campaign raised more than $5 million for the recount effort and filed the necessary paperwork in Wisconsin on Friday. She is expected to file similar challenges in the other two states in the coming days.
Wisconsin "is preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes for President of the United States, as requested,” Michael Haas, the Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator, said Friday.
Ms. Stein said her challenge to the results was not an attempt to swing the outcome of November’s election from Mr. Trump to Mrs. Clinton. As the standard-bearer of the left-leaning Green Party, Ms. Stein and her supporters frequently assert there is little ideological difference between the Democratic and Republican Party.
In the preliminary tallies, Mr. Trump has a lead of more than 100,000 votes in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan combined. Together, they have enough electoral votes to swing the election from Mr. Trump to Mrs. Clinton.
All statewide recounts must be completed by a federal deadline of December 13. Wisconsin state officials expect the recount to begin late next week, with county election officials planning evening and weekend work to complete the recount.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-...ein-1480179181
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