Today begins the recount in Wisconsin. Failed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed for a recount suggesting that by doing so, Americans will have greater faith in the election process.
Stein had to fork over $3.5 million for the recount in Wisconsin alone.
From ABC News:
The first recount of the presidential election starts today in Wisconsin as two other states are preparing for their own iterations.The Wisconsin recount is going to run from its start at 9 a.m. this morning until the set end time of 8 p.m. on Dec. 12. That completion deadline was set by the Wisconsin Elections Commission because the federal deadline for all recounts is Dec. 13, 35 days after the election.That is the same day by which Michigan and Pennsylvania, where other recount petitions have also been submitted, would have to complete their expected recounts as well.The commission received the nearly $3.5 million wire transfer from former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on Tuesday, allowing the process to move forward.
The recount is no small undertaking, as the Journal Sentinel explains:
A spokesman for the Wisconsin Election Commission said the agency will be trying to gather and release daily recount data from each county in the state showing any tally changes for voting wards. Reid Magney said news media might need to add up the data themselves to determine whether GOP President-elect Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton see a statewide gain in votes on a given day.”In a statewide sense I don’t know if we’re going to go that far,” Magney said of analyzing the raw data before the recount ends.In addition, the agency will be collecting an explanation from local officials for all the cases in which 10 or more votes are changed in a given reporting unit, which is typically a voting ward.In the official count of the 2.98 million votes cast in Wisconsin, Trump was certified to have won by 22,000 votes — an outcome that is very unlikely to change if this recount behaves as other statewide recounts have in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Hillary’s campaign joined an unsuccessful suit filed by Stein and one other independent candidate which sought to block the use of ballot-counting machines. Stein claims she’s working alone, but, and I’m sure it’s purely coincidence, has only requested recounts in three states where Hillary was projected to win, but came in second behind Donald Trump. Pennsylvania and Michigan.
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