Jill Stein, the US Green party’s presidential candidate, is prepared to request recounts of the election result in several key battleground states, her campaign said on Wednesday.

Stein launched an online fundraising page seeking donations toward a multimillion-dollar fund she said was needed to request reviews of the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Before midnight EST on Wednesday, the drive had already raised more than the $2 million necessary to file for a recount in Wisconsin, where the deadline to challenge is on Friday.

Stein said she was acting due to “compelling evidence of voting anomalies” and that data analysis had indicated “significant discrepancies in vote totals” that were released by state authorities.

“These concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified,” she said in a statement.

The fundraising page said it expected to need around $6m-7m to challenge the results in all three states.

Stein’s move came amid growing calls for recounts or audits of the election results by groups of academics and activists concerned that foreign hackers may have interfered with election systems.

The concerned groups have been urging Hillary Clinton, the defeated Democratic nominee, to join their cause.

Donald Trump won unexpected and narrow victories against Clinton in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin earlier this month and may yet win Michigan, where a final result has not yet been declared.

Stein and her campaign made clear they were acting because they wanted to ensure the election results were authentic, rather than because they thought she had actually won any of the contests.

Several states allow any candidate who was on the ballot to request a recount.

She and those seeking recounts will need to move swiftly. This Friday is the deadline for requesting a recount in Wisconsin, where Trump’s winning margin stands at 0.7 per cent.

In Pennsylvania, where his margin is 1.2 per cent, the deadline falls on Monday. In Michigan, where the Trump lead is currently just 0.3 per cent, the deadline is Wednesday 30th November. </s> Politicians across the country are calling for ballot recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in light of reports of potential voting machine manipulation.

And the seemingly overzealous prospect became tangible early Thursday as Green Party candidate Jill Stein announced that her campaign had raised the $2.5 million necessary to file for audits in the three Rust Belt states.

Stein’s camp launched the “#RECOUNT2016” fundraiser Wednesday, as Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead against Donald Trump surpassed 2 million. Less than 24 hours later, the Green Party nominee’s fundraiser had smashed the monetary glass ceiling…[+] </s> HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is taking her bid for a statewide recount of Pennsylvania’s Nov. 8 presidential election to federal court.

After announcing Stein and recount supporters were dropping their case in state court, lawyer Jonathan Abady said they will seek an emergency federal court order Monday.

“Make no mistake — the Stein campaign will continue to fight for a statewide recount in Pennsylvania,” Abady said in a statement Saturday night. “We are committed to this fight to protect the civil and voting rights of all Americans.”

He said barriers to a recount in Pennsylvania are pervasive and the state court system is ill-equipped to address the problem.

Stein has spearheaded a recount effort in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, three states with a history of backing Democrats for president that were narrowly and unexpectedly won by Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Stein has framed the campaign as an effort to explore whether voting machines and systems had been hacked and the election result manipulated. Stein’s lawyers, however, have offered no evidence of hacking in Pennsylvania’s election, and the state Republican Party and Trump had asked the court to dismiss the state court case.

The recount-campaign decision came two days before a state court hearing was scheduled in the case. Saturday’s court filing to withdraw the case said the Green Party-backed voters who filed it “are regular citizens of ordinary means” and cannot afford the $1 million bond ordered by the court by 5 p.m. Monday.

Meanwhile, Green Party-backed efforts to force recounts and analyze election software in scattered precincts were continuing.

A recount began Thursday in Wisconsin, while a recount could begin this week in Michigan.

Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania was particularly stunning: the state’s fifth-most electoral votes are a key stepping stone to the White House, and no Republican presidential candidate had captured the state since 1988.

In seeking the recount, Stein has noted hackers’ probing of election targets in other states and hackers’ accessing the emails of the Democratic National Committee and several Clinton staffers. U.S. security officials have said they believe Russian hackers orchestrated the email hacks, something Russia has denied.

Lawyers for Trump and the Pennsylvania Republican Party argued there was no evidence, or even an allegation, that tampering with the state’s voting systems had occurred. Further, Pennsylvania law does not allow a court-ordered recount, they said.

The state case also had threatened Pennsylvania’s ability to certify its presidential electors by the Dec. 13 federal deadline, Republican lawyers argued.

GOP lawyer Lawrence Tabas said Saturday the case had been meant “solely for purposes to delay the Electoral College vote in Pennsylvania for President-Elect Trump.”

The state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Pedro Cortes, a Democrat, has said there was no evidence of any cyberattacks or irregularities in the election. And any recount would change few votes, Cortes predicted.

Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/timelywriter. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/author/marc-levy </s> “The Commission is preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes for President of the United States, as requested by these candidates,” Commission Administrator Michael Haas said in a statement on the agency's website.

The move follows comments by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein earlier on Friday that her push for election recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania was aimed at assessing the integrity of the U.S. voting system, not at undermining Republican Donald Trump's White House victory.

While Stein's effort this week may have spurred hope among disappointed supporters of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the chances of such recounts - if they take place - overturning the overall result from the Nov. 8 election are extremely slim, given Trump's margins of victory in the three states.

Since launching the recount campaign on Wednesday, Stein has raised more than $5 million. The Green Party said it wants to raise $7 million for the recounts, including the cost of legal fees.

The Green Party has said that despite the millions it has raised to fund the recounts, it could not guarantee any would occur and that if its requests were denied or there were surplus funds, it would use the money to push for voting system reforms.

Stein, who won just 1 percent of the national vote herself, told CNN that while there was no evidence of tampering or other voting errors in the election, only a full review in those states would give Americans confidence in the results.

"This was a hack-riddled election," she said, pointing to hacking before the vote of political organizations and individual email accounts, as well as recent media reports citing concerns by computer security experts.

The deadline to request the Wisconsin recount was Friday afternoon, while for Pennsylvania the deadline is Monday and for Michigan Wednesday.

Wisconsin's Haas said that with a federal deadline of Dec. 13 to complete the recounts, county boards of canvassers might have to work evenings and weekends.

The other petitioner for a recount in the state was third-party candidate Rocky Roque De La Fuente, the commission statement said.

Although Trump won narrowly in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the margins make it highly unlikely that any recounts would end up giving Clinton a win in all three states, which would be needed for the overall presidential election result to change. Trump beat Clinton in Pennsylvania by 70,010 votes, in Michigan by 10,704 votes and in Wisconsin by 27,257 votes.

The presidential race is decided by the Electoral College, or a tally of wins from the state-by-state contests, rather than by the popular national vote. The Electoral College results are expected to be finalized when electors meet on Dec. 19.

Trump surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win, although once the final tallies of votes are in, Clinton will have won the national popular vote by more than 2 million votes.

Asked if she was trying to upset Trump, Stein told CNN "Absolutely not," adding that she also did not back Clinton.

A representative for Trump's transition team on Thursday had no comment on Stein's effort. In a Twitter post on Thursday, senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway cited a New York Times article and mocked Clinton supporters who "can't accept the election results."

Clinton has not commented on Stein's effort, and a representative for her did not reply to a request for comment. </s> Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on Thursday launched a bid to seek a vote recount in Wisconsin, the first of three Rust Belt states won by Donald Trump where she intends to challenge the results.

Stein’s campaign announced the same day that it had raised the $1.1 million necessary to fund a recount in Wisconsin and was on track to do the same in Pennsylvania and Michigan, having raised $2.7 million of a $4.5 million goal.

Her campaign has cited unspecified “anomalies” as grounds to mount a challenge in all three states.

The move comes amid stepped-up calls from some of Trump’s left-wing opponents to challenge the results of the Nov. 8 election, which was marked by warnings of foreign hacking and vote rigging.

“The unexpected results of the election and reported anomalies need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified,” Stein said on her website. “We deserve elections we can trust.”

Although there is virtually no chance of overturning the result, the demands could reignite debate over the legitimacy of Trump’s election, already fueled by Democrat Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote which now stands at 2 million.

“Raising money to pay for the first round so quickly is a miraculous feat and a tribute to the power of grass-roots organizing,” Stein’s website read.

The Midwestern state of Wisconsin was a key battleground in the election, helping propel the Republican Trump to a victory that stunned the nation.

Trump also won swing state Pennsylvania, and claimed a razor-thin victory in Michigan according to unofficial results released Wednesday.

Although she lost in the indirect electoral college tally, which decides who wins the White House, Clinton’s lead in the popular vote has risen as official results are finalized, narrowing the result in some swing states where she lost.

Clinton conceded on Nov. 9 and her campaign is not supporting the recount calls.

Stein’s demands follow a bitter presidential campaign that included persistent charges of Russian hacking and fraud.

Trump also warned during his campaign that the election would be “rigged,” and refused to say whether he would accept the results.

Any result change would not help Stein, who won just over 1.1 percent of Wisconsin’s vote.

But she launched the recount effort after computer scientists reportedly told the Clinton campaign the election may have been rigged in Trump’s favor.

The scientists, including University of Michigan’s J. Alex Halderman, together with voting rights activist John Bonifaz and others, said Clinton’s votes were 7 percent below expectations in counties that tallied votes with electronic machines.

“These recounts are part of an election integrity movement to attempt to shine a light on just how untrustworthy the U.S. election system is,” Stein’s website said, adding that the attempt is “not intended to help Hillary Clinton.”

Clinton lost by a razor-thin margin of around 27,000 votes in Wisconsin and 60,000 votes in Pennsylvania.

Unofficial results released by Michigan’s secretary of state’s office, put Trump ahead by a mere 10,704 votes.

“I think it’s only natural and good for Americans to be reassured that our votes are counted,” Stein told CNN Thursday, “especially after such a divisive and bitter election where 80 percent of Americans … basically said they were disgusted with this election.”

But one of the scientists she cites, Halderman, Wednesday sought to dampen mounting speculation that recounts would change the election’s result.

“Were this year’s deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack?” he wrote on Medium. “Probably not.”

Rather, the polling was more likely “systematically wrong.”

The only way to remove any lingering controversy, however, would be to study “paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states,” he added.

The well-known statistician Nate Silver was also skeptical about any possible change in the results, tweeting that the disputed voting patterns “are well-explained by demographics — not hacking.”

Wisconsin swung Republican this month for the time since voters there helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1984.

It is unclear how much success Stein will have challenging the results in other states.

A recount filing costs $500,000 in Pennsylvania, due on Monday. The filing fee in Michigan is $600,000, due by Wednesday.

Stein’s campaign anticipates eventually needing $6 million to $7 million to cover attorney fees and statewide recount observation costs. </s> Recount requests filed by the Green Party's Jill Stein continue to gain momentum in key swing states as her campaign raises millions in a matter of days.

Stein said she plans to request a recount in Michigan over its 16 electoral votes as similar cases progress in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Donald Trump was the apparent winner in all three states, defeating Hillary Clinton by margins in the range of tens of thousands of votes.

While the effort has raised more than $6 million, Stein's campaign said in a statement the average donation was about $46.

The recounts would not change the election outcome for Stein, who finished fourth behind Libertarian Gary Johnson, but there is a very small chance they could flip the states for Clinton.

That result remains highly unlikely, as the Democrat would need to overcome Trump's winning margins in all three states to wrest the Electoral College majority from him. Clinton currently leads Trump by more than 2 million in the popular vote, according to an ongoing count by the Cook Political Report.

Clinton's campaign has said it will participate in the recount in Wisconsin while Trump claims the process is a "scam."

In a Monday statement, Stein's campaign said, "The recount funds are being held in a dedicated account, separate from Stein's Presidential campaign treasury, and will be used to pay for all costs associated with the recounts, including required payments to states, lawyers, volunteer recruitment and other technical assistance."

Below is the latest on the recounts: </s> MILWAUKEE - Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on Thursday reached her goal to raise $2.5 million to request a recount in Wisconsin, one of three states where she plans to seek an audit of U.S. presidential election results, her campaign said.

Stein will ask Wisconsin to verify vote totals tallied by electronic machines that her campaign called "highly vulnerable to hacking and malicious reprogramming" in a statement on its website.

She is also trying to raise an additional $2 million to request recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, where deadlines are next week to file the required paperwork.

Election experts have identified Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania as states where "statistical anomalies" occurred, according to the Stein campaign.

"We deserve elections we can trust," the campaign said.

Republican Donald Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by slight margins in the three battleground states on his way to an upset in the presidential election on Nov. 8. Leading up to the election, many polls had Clinton defeating Trump.

Although Clinton won the popular vote, Trump is well ahead in Electoral College votes, the determining tally in winning the presidency in the United States. Stein won a little more than 1 percent of the popular vote.

"Our effort to recount votes in those states is not intended to help Hillary Clinton," the Stein campaign said.

Election experts are calling for Clinton to seek a manual review of paper ballots and voting equipment in the three states, University of Michigan computer science professor J. Alex Halderman wrote in an essay.

Such an examination would "help allay doubt and give voters justified confidence that the results are accurate," Halderman wrote on Medium.com, a site where users can self-publish articles and essays.

The most likely explanation for the polls wrongly predicting a Clinton win was that they were "systematically wrong" rather than that the election being hacked, he wrote. (Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) </s> Jason Miller, communications director for President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, urged the media Monday to focus on “issues of both voter fraud and illegal immigrants voting” rather than an election recount that he dismissed as “nonsensical” and a “shiny object.”

Miller’s comments came on the transition team’s daily press call when he was asked about a series of tweets Trump sent on Sunday asserting that he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” His campaign has provided no evidence for the claim, and outside experts say it has no merit.

Trump made his comments in response to news that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign is participating in a recount of the voting in Wisconsin that was requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein. The recount can take place with or without Clinton’s involvement, but she has the right to have observers present, and evidently intends to exercise it. Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias said the campaign would also participate in recounts of Pennsylvania and Michigan if Stein is successful in initiating them.

Stein’s recount push came after a group of computer science experts said they detected statistical anomalies in voting patterns in those states that possibly benefited Trump. Other experts have dismissed these claims and Elias has said the Clinton campaign has found no evidence of irregularities. Trump won in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and Clinton would need to flip the results in all three — considered extremely unlikely — to change the outcome in the Electoral College.

On Twitter, Trump dismissed the recount as a “Green Party scam.” He went on to allege there was “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California,” all states won by Clinton. Trump is not requesting recounts in those states. His comments were widely discounted because there is no independent evidence that large numbers of people “voted illegally.” The claim seems to have originated as an Internet conspiracy theory.

During Monday’s transition team press call, Miller was asked if he had any evidence of illegal voting in the three blue states. “Thanks for bringing that up,” Miller replied, but answered instead by attacking Clinton for backing a recount. He pointed out that Clinton initially conceded the election to Trump. He added that Elias, her campaign’s general counsel, has called for North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory to concede and stop contesting his reelection loss even though it was by a “much smaller margin.”

“I really do think that it’s been ridiculous that so much oxygen has been given to a recount effort where there’s absolutely no chance of any election results changing. This election has been decided. It’s a conceded election,” Miller said.

In support of Trump’s assertions, Miller cited reports of people who were improperly registered to vote — including a disputed Washington Post article from 2014 that cited data showing “more than 14 percent of noncitizens” indicated they were registered to vote in polling conducted for a study in 2008 and 2010. He also pointed to a Pew Research study from 2012 that found “approximately 24 million — one of every eight — voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate” and that “approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.”

“So, all of these are studies or examples where there have been issues of both voter fraud and illegal immigrants voting,” said Miller. “So, if this much attention and oxygen is going to be given to a completely frivolous throwaway fundraising scheme by someone like Jill Stein, then there should be actual, substantive looks at the overall examples of voter fraud and illegal immigrants voting in recent years. And so that’s the broader message that I think should be taken away here.”

Pressed by reporters, Miller did not cite any specific evidence of illegal voting, as distinguished from improper registrations. Asked if there was a chance Trump would push federal or local officials to investigate voter fraud when he takes office next January. Miller said it would be “inappropriate” for him to speculate about potential investigations, but he reiterated his view voter fraud is a “concern” that merits attention and press coverage. “Obviously, I do think that it’s an issue of concern, the fact that there’s a concern that so many … voted who were not legally supposed to,” Miller said, before adding, “I think there’s a responsibility from members of the media … to give an appropriate level of attention to some of these different concerns … as opposed to just chasing the shiny object of the Jill Stein recount effort, which is really just a way for Ms. Stein and the Green Party to make money.” Stein’s campaign claims to have raised over $6.3 million to file for recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. The campaign initially said they would “need to raise about 2.5 million dollars collectively for all three states” for filing costs. Stein and her campaign have not responded to multiple requests for comment from Yahoo News about Trump’s criticism of the effort. </s> Michigan's recount of the state's presidential election results commenced at noon on Monday, following a late-night ruling by a federal judge.In a rare Sunday hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Goldsmith ruled in the favor of Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who requested the recount, allowing the massive effort to begin Monday instead of Wednesday.The jumpstart left Michigan clerks scrambling to hand-count some 4.8 million ballots by Dec. 13.Stein, who finished in fourth place with less than 1.1 percent of the vote, has requested recounts in key battleground states Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania amid concerns that the election could have been hacked . In Michigan, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by just 10,704 votes — the most narrow margin for a presidential election in the state's history. (84,290 ballots did not have a recorded vote in the presidential election, an increase of 80 percent from 2012.)Attorney General Bill Schuette and other Michigan Republicans have attempted to stop the recount, calling recount a waste of taxpayer money. Trump has called Stein's effort "a scam" meant to fill the Green Party's coffers.But Goldsmith ruled in favor of Stein, writing "Without elections that are conducted fairly – and perceived to be fairly conducted – public confidence in our political institutions will swiftly erode.", the Stein campaign says it has recruited hundreds of volunteers to help in the recount effort. However, Southfield attorney Mark Brewer, who is representing the campaign in Michigan, admitted it was “highly doubtful” that the recount could be completed by the deadline.
The campaign of Republican president–elect Donald Trump has called the planned recounts by Green nominee Jill Stein's campaign in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan a "scam" and has criticized the participation of the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.