Three weeks after Donald J. Trump became President-Elect of the United States, Jill Stein, the presidential candidate for the Green Party, requested a recount of votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, each a state where Trump narrowly won. Stein’s team requested this recount to make sure there was no hacking involved to help Trump win these swing states, although there is no evidence of voter fraud or hacking from Russian hackers.
The Clinton team’s general counsel, Marc Elias, said that his team will be supporting Jill Stein’s effort; however, the Clinton Campaign did not plan to question the results originally.
“Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves,” wrote Elias in a post on Medium.
The Clinton team also will not be contributing financially. However, the team’s lawyers will be present at the recounting process.
Clinton’s lead in the popular vote is now over two million votes, causing urges from citizens, and even from Clinton’s own team, for Clinton to participate in the recounting process along with Stein. Furthermore, Russia is allegedly responsible for the fake news about Clinton’s health and the theft of emails from the Democratic National Convention, according to the Clinton campaign. Due to these incidents, Clinton’s campaign wants to ensure that no Russian hacking took place to help Trump win.
Although the five million dollars raised show support for the recounting process, there are also many that oppose the recount, especially Trump himself. Trump continued his rants on Twitter, this time directly quoting Hillary.
“That is a direct threat to our democracy,” said Clinton, in reference to Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the election if Clinton had won. Trump tweeted this quote, along with many other quotes, after the announcement of Stein’s and Clinton’s appeal for a recount.
“The results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing,” said Trump.
Despite this dissent, it is most likely that the recount process will result in little to no change, as research from experienced computer analysts suggests that neither hacking nor voter fraud was present in the election.
However, a greater possibility for a change in the President-Elect comes in a petition, signed by 4.6 million people. This petition, striving to get 6 million supporters, is asking members of the electoral college to ignore who their state voted for and vote for Hillary Clinton.
“Secretary Clinton won the popular vote and should be President,” says Daniel Brezenoff, who began this petition.
Regardless of these two movements, Elias still believes that it is very unlikely that Trump will lose the Presidential-Elect position.
