Jill Stein Faces Uphill Battle in Pennsylvania Recount Suit
Pennsylvania is no Wisconsin
Failed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is making more headlines now than during the election cycle.
Earlier today, Stein requested a recount in over 100 Pennsylvania precincts.
Politico reports:
Legal papers filed in Commonwealth Court by a lawyer for Stein’s campaign contend the Nov. 8 election was “illegal” and the results inaccurate based on research suggesting there might have been irregularities with electronic voting machines, among other evidence.
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“The Stein recount effort is mobilizing concerned voters across Pennsylvania to request recounts in their precincts,” Stein campaign manager David Cobb said in a statement. “Additionally, the campaign filed a legal petition in state court today on behalf of 100 Pennsylvania voters to protect their right to substantively contest the election in Pennsylvania beyond the recounts being filed by voters at the precinct level. This petition will allow the campaign to pursue a full statewide recount in Pennsylvania if precinct-level recounts uncover any irregularities or tampering.”
The Pennsylvania action follows Stein’s initiation of the recount process in Wisconsin, where her campaign filed just before the state’s 5 p.m. deadline Friday. Stein had promised supporters that if she raised enough money to pay for additional recounts, her campaign would also file for similar action in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Hillary Clinton’s top campaign lawyer said Saturday that the Democratic nominee’s campaign would participate in the Wisconsin recount initiated by Stein, and would follow a similar approach in Michigan and Pennsylvania if she pursued recounts in those states.
In Wisconsin, Trump’s margin of victory is just over 22,000 votes. And in Pennsylvania, it’s even larger — roughly 71,000 votes.
Stein might be in for a rude awakening though. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Pennsylvania’s recount rules are quite different:
Stein’s lawsuit would have to present evidence that election fraud was probable in Pennsylvania. Democratic Secretary of State Pedro Cortes says there’s no evidence of voting irregularities during the Nov. 8 election
“Absolutely not,” Cortes told reporters. “There is no evidence whatsoever that points to any type of irregularity in any way, shape or form.”
While Stein is essentially alleging that errors, tampering or hacking had occurred to affect outcomes in the three states, even computer scientists who recommended a recount to rule out tampering have gone to great lengths to make it clear there is no proof of hacking or fraud in the election results.
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Complicating any recount effort is the fact that Pennsylvania is one of 15 states that use electronic voting machines that don’t have a paper-backed audit.
“The nightmare scenario would be if Pennsylvania decides the election and it is very close,” Lawrence Norden, an expert on voting machines, told the Los Angeles Times prior to the election. “You would have no paper records to do a recount.”
Even if Stein were able to overcome the odds and initiate a statewide recount, it’s doubtful Clinton would be able to overcome Trump’s 70,638 lead in Pennsylvania. From 2000 and 2015, the outcome of the election was changed in just three of 27 elections, according to FairVote, a nonpartisan electoral reform group that researches elections. The largest swing occurred in Florida in 2000, when 1,247 voters for George W. Bush were flipped to his opponent, Al Gore, which wasn’t enough to overturn the state’s results.
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Comments
Read elsewhere the Pennsylvania deadline for voter-initiated recalls was November 21st. Gonna make it a bit tougher for her.
Daiwa, righto!
“Stein missed Pennsylvania’s deadline to file for a voter-initiated recount. That blown deadline is a huge blow for Democrats who have pinned their hopes on recounts in the Keystone State, Michigan and Wisconsin.
“According to Wanda Murren, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday, “the deadline for a voter-initiated recount was Monday, Nov. 21.”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pennsylvania-state-department-says-stein-missed-recount-deadline/article/2608305
Stein might be in for a rude awakening though. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Pennsylvania’s recount rules are quite different…
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I love federalism…!!!
From what I’m reading, they’ve missed the deadline for a “recount” in Pennsylvania, but can still make the deadline (today) to “contest” the election.
*shrug*
funny how this stuff didn’t matter in 2012 when many areas of PN had 120 % or more registered voter turnout.
nope; then it was racist to question it.
I find it humorous that this whole recount episode was spurred by “computer scientists” who analyzed the voting data and found supposed irregularities.
Where were these guys in 2012 when Romney got zero votes in 59 different Philly voting divisions? That was 19,605 to 0. Seems highly irregular to me.
Sorry about the accidental down vote. They were probably in the same place then as now. In their mother’s basement.
Shouldn’t this doctor be fixing hemorrhoids or something useful? She took up a place at medical school that someone else, who would have used that education to cure the sick and alleviate pain, could have had.
If you were ill, would you want that imbecile in charge of your diagnosis and treatment?
I wouldn’t trust Jill Stein to fix Bernie Sanders’ hemorrhoids. He’d have better results at Home Depot. Get ‘er done, Bernie!
Unless news reports are inaccurate what Wisconsin has conditionally agreed to is not a manual recount of ballots, but a 72 county re-check of already tabulated results… which must be paid for in advance. Arguing about the preconditions on such a tight deadline won’t work in Stein’s favor.
And Stein STILL hasn’t coughed up the money for a Wisconsin recount. They say if they don’t get it by tomorrow, it ain’t happening
Stein has sued to force a manual recount and, she might just find a friendly judge, although the Wisconsin Supreme Court would almost certainly over-rule it.
Most of Wisconsin uses optical scanning of paper ballots, and most counties will just feed the paper ballots back through the scanners. As they should, as optical scanning is a mature technology and will almost certainly produce a more accurate count than a hand count.
BUT I don’t think they have to. Even if/when Stein loses her lawsuit, the counties will have the authority to do the recount as they see fit, and some will probably hand-count.
The real purpose of all this counting is to delay the Electoral College registration on 12/13/16, if WI, MI, & PA are all delayed, no candidate will get 270, and the decision goes to the House of Representatives. Many speculate that the career politicians there will happily choose Clinton over Trump to continue their corrupt ways. The (communist) Greens know they can’t change the votes, they are trying only to delay them so that Dec 13th is missed. That’s the real goal, and it seems they have a lot of powerful legal resources and money sources such that they could navigate all of this so quickly.
That’s a very plausible ‘strategy’ but I wonder how cooperative those states will be in letting her (and HRC) push them beyond the EC voting deadline. Certainly not PA, since that ship has sailed. Without PA (assuming HRC’s weasels can’t eff with that, a big assumption I know), they can’t get there from here, anyway.
I’m only directly familiar with Indiana & Arizona, but I’ve always been under the impression that voting results could only be challenged if the margin of victory fell within a certain percentage of the total votes cast, the threshold usually being 1% to my recollection. I also don’t understand how Stein has standing as an individual to request a recount if she ‘s not a resident of the state in question. Legal eagles here may be able to shed some light on that and whether this kind of recount request has ever been made before.
Not only is she not a resident, she represents a party that in no stretch of the imagination could benefit from a recount. But you can ask for anything, it’s up to the opposition’s attorneys to move for a dismissal based on lack of standing.
She has no standing, it’s just a question of how rotten our country has become. If it’s not totally corrupt, her request of “contest” (not recount, as that window has closed) will be rejected. To contest an election after the recount window has closed people must swear under oath that they know there has been fraud. If they’re lying they are committing perjury, punishable by up to 7 years in prison, as per:
http://janderresearch.blogspot.fi/2016/11/there-will-be-no-recount-in.html?m=1
Hopefully we still have law in this country and communist Stein (the puppet of the Clintons most likely) will fail in her efforts.
“Well, I just knew there was fraud, but their sneaky lawyers pulled some dirty tricks and covered it up.”
No, Stein is coming across as an inept fool. Seems to me she didn’t get on the ballot on many states because of disorganization. And then she travelled to the wrong state in order go give a speech.
If Stein gets to keep the donated money left over after the legal challenges are made, then this could be quite a nice compensation prize for competing. After all, the challenges are most unlikely to change the EC numbers, but as for the money, cui bono?
I don’t see it coming to that. Trump will simply ask the courts to stop the recount and the first question any judge is going to look at is the purpose for the recount. Stein has no credible reason for a recount. She didn’t even receive 1% of the vote and has no chance of ever being president, so no matter what happens it will change nothing for her. Any Judge in his right mind will stop the recounts so the peaceful transition can occur.
How poorly is Stiens recount justified even the Hillary campaign is refusing to actually participate, well other than financially, because there is no evidence of voter fraud. Steins request for recount should have been denied in the first place.
I seem to remember there being something about Florida legislators insistence that they meet the Dec 13 safe harbor provision in Bush vs Gore.
MI has already certified the results, so Trump has 270 even without PA and WI.
This is really just a money laundering scheme to pay off the Green Party staffers. Follow the money…
That is just ignorant paranoid talk. The recount can’t have that effect. Even if it is not done by the 19th, the states will just certify the original count and the R electors will vote.
And if it went to the House there’s no way it would choose Clinton.
I have also read that if they don’t make the EC deadline that the house just chooses where the votes go so I don’t know.
The real money behind the rencounter effort is Goerge Soros. The plead for donations is just a smokescreen. That way, Soros has deniability in case he gets questioned.
I’ll bet a lot of states change their rules to permit recounts to be filed only by the candidate with the 2nd highest vote totals.
Wouldn’t help. Clinton has joined the recount efforts.
Not officially, they are giving mouth service to “supporting” the recount but have made it clear they are not actively participating last I heard.
Her peeps are only “observing.” Team Hillary hasn’t joined the effort as a “participant.” This may be an attempt to try to avoid aggravating The Donald, who holds the Sword of Damocles over her head.
Stein’s attorney’s claim that the election was “illegal” directly contradicts her claim that nothing in the election was illegal. She’s a space and air cadet. .. It’s over.
Send this to any lefties:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxF0zoxUcAErGob.jpg
Wouldn’t the statisticians paper be subject to Frye/Daubert in any court case.
The paper itself may be perfectly fine, vbut seems to me to be immture for use in a court case.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZPC.html
The Supreme Court of Florida has said that the legislature intended the State’s electors to “participat[e] fully in the federal electoral process,” as provided in 3 U.S.C. § 5. ___ So. 2d, at ___ (slip op. at 27); see also Palm Beach Canvassing Bd. v. Harris, 2000 WL 1725434, *13 (Fla. 2000). That statute, in turn, requires that any controversy or contest that is designed to lead to a conclusive selection of electors be completed by December 12. That date is upon us, and there is no recount procedure in place under the State Supreme Court’s order that comports with minimal constitutional standards. Because it is evident that any recount seeking to meet the December 12 date will be unconstitutional for the reasons we have discussed, we reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida ordering a recount to proceed.
She should change her name to Shill Stein.
all states should be required to have paper backups. Are you for real? Computers can fail. They can be hacked. All states should use a standardized optic scanner voting system which will have a paper backup in case a recount is called for. Not that this dingbat has a real reason to call for a recount
A major waste of time and money!
Unless they can win in 3 states: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania the election will not change.
The Clinton team better be careful with this nonsense.
A special prosecutor could be appointed very easily.