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> The organization behind the presidential campaign for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, along with one other group, on Friday filed a petition with the Wisconsin Elections Commission for a recount of votes in the Nov. 8 election, the commission said.

“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. </s> Wisconsin plans to begin a recount Thursday morning of votes cast in the presidential election, but in a blow to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, a judge ruled Tuesday night that the procedure does not have to happen entirely by hand.

"I follow the law. That's who I am despite my personal opinions," said Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported. "It's [the counties'] decision. It's their discretion. I may disagree with it ... but I must follow the law."

The Wisconsin Elections Commission announced Tuesday that it had received nearly $3.5 million from Stein's campaign to pay for the recount. The state said it would bill Stein for any additional costs.

State officials said the recount would begin at 9 a.m. Thursday and that all county-level efforts must be completed by 8 p.m. on Dec. 12.

Stein's campaign expressed disappointment that the state would give counties the option of a hand recount or a machine recount, but said it would press ahead nonetheless.

"Tonight's ruling will not deter our efforts, and we will continue to work with the Wisconsin Elections Commission to see this recount through," Stein attorney Matthew D. Brinckerhoff said in a statement Tuesday.

State Attorney General Brad Schimel, a Republican, expressed a different perspective, saying in his own statement that he was "very pleased with the Judge's decision, particularly because she followed the law enacted by the legislature that sets the parameters for a hand recount."

Wisconsin is one of three states where Stein is moving ahead with plans to force a recount, citing concerns about the possibility of hacks in the vote tally, although she has presented no evidence of malfeasance. She has taken legal action to try to force one in Pennsylvania and says she is planning to ask for one in Michigan on Wednesday.

Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by one percentage point in Wisconsin. Stein finished well behind both candidates.

The Michigan Republican Party, speaking on behalf of President-elect Trump's team, said Tuesday that it sees a potential recount there as a waste of time and state resources. But it would not say whether it would file a legal challenge to stop one if Stein follows through on her pledge.

The Clinton campaign has joined the recount efforts initiated by Stein, although her team has said it does not expect the outcome of the election to be reversed. </s> An election recount will take place soon in Wisconsin, after former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed a petition Friday with the state's Elections Commission, the first of three states where she has promised to contest the election result.

The move from Stein, who raised millions since her Wednesday announcement that she would seek recounts of Donald Trump's apparent election victories in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, came just 90 minutes before Wisconsin's 5 p.m. Friday deadline to file a petition. Now it will keep some hope alive for many Hillary Clinton supporters for another few weeks while Wisconsin recounts ballots before a Dec. 13 deadline.

Trump scored upset victories in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and seems on the path to declare a victory in Michigan as well, although the result of the election in that state will not be certified officially until Monday. Had Clinton won those three states, previously seen as part of the Democrats' "firewall," she would have secured enough votes in the Electoral College to win the election.

Stein announced her intention to file the petition following reports that a group of data experts and election lawyers were urging Clinton to demand a recount in those three states, on suspicion that a cyberattack could have manipulated the results of the election in those states. While the group had no specific proof of hacking, they noted irregularities suggesting Clinton routinely did more poorly in Wisconsin counties that used voting machines, as opposed to those that relied on paper ballots.

Trump secured a total of 1,404,000 votes in Wisconsin, according to the commission; Clinton had 1,381,823. Stein secured 31,006 votes.

To be on the safe side, the group of experts urged a recount - but it was Stein's campaign that ended up demanding one, soliciting at first $2.5 million and later up to $7 million to fund the recounts. As of Friday evening, Stein's campaign reported taking in over $5.25 million in recount-related donations - the most by a third-party candidate in history.

Wisconsin has the first deadline of the three states in question. If Stein's campaign wishes to file recount petitions in the other states as promised, she must do so by Monday to meet Pennsylvania's deadline, and Wednesday to meet Michigan's deadline.

In the end, Stein was not the only presidential candidate to demand a recount. Roque "Rocky" De La Fuente, the Reform Party nominee who got 1,514 Wisconsin votes, also filed a recount petition, according to the state's Elections Commission.

In a statement, Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Michael Haas guessed that the cost and complexity of the recount would be in excess of the state's last recount in 2011, which carried a price tag of more than $520,000. In that recount over a state Supreme Court seat, the commission had to recount 1.5 million votes - about half the 2.975 million ballot votes that were cast during the 2016 presidential election.

Stein put a note on her Facebook page on Friday, asking supporters "to consider volunteering to help in the recount process."

The county boards of canvassers will conduct the recount, according to the commission's statement, and will have the authority "to decide which ballots should and should not be counted," Haas said.

If the candidates disagree with the results of the Wisconsin recount, they will have five business days to contest the outcome in court. </s> An election recount will take place soon in Wisconsin, after former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed a petition Friday with the state’s Elections Commission, the first of three states where she has promised to contest the election result.

The move from Stein, who raised millions since her Wednesday announcement that she would seek recounts of Donald Trump’s apparent election victories in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, came just 90 minutes before Wisconsin’s 5 p.m. Friday deadline to file a petition. Now it will keep some hope alive for many Hillary Clinton supporters for another few weeks while Wisconsin recounts ballots before a Dec. 13 deadline.

Trump scored upset victories in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and seems on the path to declare a victory in Michigan as well, although the result of the election in that state will not be certified officially until Monday. Had Clinton won those three states, previously seen as part of the Democrats’ “firewall,” she would have secured enough votes in the Electoral College to win the election.

Stein announced her intention to file the petition following reports that a group of data experts and election lawyers were urging Clinton to demand a recount in those three states, on suspicion that a cyberattack could have manipulated the results of the election in those states. While the group had no specific proof of hacking, they noted irregularities suggesting Clinton routinely did more poorly in Wisconsin counties that used voting machines, as opposed to those that relied on paper ballots.

Trump secured a total of 1,404,000 votes in Wisconsin, according to the commission; Clinton had 1,381,823. Stein secured 31,006 votes.

To be on the safe side, the group of experts urged a recount – but it was Stein’s campaign that ended up demanding one, soliciting at first $2.5 million and later up to $7 million to fund the recounts. As of Friday evening, Stein’s campaign reported taking in over $5.25 million in recount-related donations – the most by a third-party candidate in history.

Wisconsin has the first deadline of the three states in question. If Stein’s campaign wishes to file recount petitions in the other states as promised, she must do so by Monday to meet Pennsylvania’s deadline, and Wednesday to meet Michigan’s deadline.

In the end, Stein was not the only presidential candidate to demand a recount. Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente, the Reform Party nominee who got 1,514 Wisconsin votes, also filed a recount petition, according to the state’s Elections Commission.

In a statement, Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Michael Haas guessed that the cost and complexity of the recount would be in excess of the state’s last recount in 2011, which carried a price tag of more than $520,000. In that recount over a state Supreme Court seat, the commission had to recount 1.5 million votes – about half the 2.975 million ballot votes that were cast during the 2016 presidential election.

Stein put a note on her Facebook page on Friday, asking supporters “to consider volunteering to help in the recount process.”

The county boards of canvassers will conduct the recount, according to the commission’s statement, and will have the authority “to decide which ballots should and should not be counted,” Haas said.

If the candidates disagree with the results of the Wisconsin recount, they will have five business days to contest the outcome in court. </s> Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein on Wednesday requested a full hand recount of Michigan’s presidential vote, making it the third state where she’s asked for another look at a race narrowly won by Republican Donald Trump.

Stein had previously requested recounts of the presidential votes in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

President-elect Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes out of nearly 4.8 million ballots cast in Michigan, but Stein alleges that irregularities and the potential for hacking into scanning devices call the results into question.

Michigan’s recount could start as early as Friday, though a challenge to the recount by Trump could delay it.

Trump’s victory is highly unlikely to be reversed in any of the states, but Stein has said the recount will ensure the integrity of the election.

Republicans have said a Michigan recount would cost taxpayers far more than the $973,000 Stein must pay when filing her recount petition.

Meanwhile in Wisconsin, where Trump defeated Clinton by roughly 22,000 votes, Stein’s campaign said Wednesday that it won’t appeal a judge’s ruling that Wisconsin’s recount can be done without counting every ballot by hand.

Stein spokeswoman Margy Levinson said in an email that the campaign decided not to appeal the ruling due to the tight time constraints for completing the Wisconsin recount, which begins Thursday.

The majority of Wisconsin counties planned to do a hand recount of ballots cast even though the judge’s ruling means they can choose to feed the ballots into tabulation machines to double check the counts.

Levinson said Stein’s focus will be on verifying the vote on the ground and she encouraged counties to voluntarily conduct a hand recount.

Also Wednesday, the Wisconsin Republican Party filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission alleging that Stein’s recount effort amounts to illegal co-ordination with Clinton.

The complaint contends that Clinton is the only person who could benefit from a recount and that she illegally helped Stein raise money for the recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Spokeswomen for Stein and Clinton’s campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump defeated Clinton in Pennsylvania by about 71,000 votes, or about 1 percentage point. </s> 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> The Wisconsin lawsuit and motion for a temporary restraining order was filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court in Madison by the Great America PAC, the Stop Hillary PAC and a Wisconsin voter, Ronald R. Johnson. The legal filings contend that the recount is unconstitutional because it doesn’t satisfy equal protection requirements under the law and may not get done by the Dec. 13 federal deadline to certify the vote, putting Wisconsin’s electoral votes in jeopardy.

No court hearings had been scheduled as of Friday morning. The Wisconsin Department of Justice was reviewing the lawsuit, said Johnny Koremenos, spokesman for Attorney General Brad Schimel.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who requested both recounts and a third in Pennsylvania, has suggested that Trump and his backers would try to delay the recounts to make them hard or impossible to complete by the deadline for states to certify their election results or have their electoral votes be decided by Congress, which is controlled by Republicans. A spokeswoman for Stein’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment Friday.

With workers in Wisconsin busy re-counting votes for a second day, Michigan’s state elections board was meeting about the Trump campaign’s request to deny Stein’s recount request. The board deadlocked, with both Republican members voting to prevent the recount and both Democrats voting to allow it, meaning it will begin Tuesday or Wednesday unless the courts intervene.

In his request to the Michigan Supreme Court to block the hand recount, Attorney General Bill Schuette, like the Trump campaign, argued that Stein cannot seek the “frivolous” recount because she was not “aggrieved” to the point at which a potential miscounting of votes could have cost her the election. She garnered 1 percent of the vote in Michigan.

In Pennsylvania, a hearing is scheduled for Monday on Stein’s push to secure a court-ordered statewide recount there. Republican lawyers filed a motion late Thursday accusing Stein of engaging in legal antics and saying her recount request endangers Pennsylvania’s ability to certify its electors by the federal deadline.

Trump won all three states by narrow margins over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Stein has argued, without evidence, that irregularities in the votes in all three states suggest that there could have been tampering with the vote, perhaps through a well-coordinated, highly complex cyberattack.

Elections officials in the three states have expressed confidence in their results. Even if all three recounts happen, they aren’t expected to flip enough votes to change the outcomes in any of the states.

In the lawsuit seeking to halt the recount in Wisconsin, which started Thursday, the plaintiffs say there is a “realistic risk” that it may not be completed by the deadline and that the “chaotic rushing necessary” to meet the deadline “creates an imminent unreasonable risk of error that can lead to votes being erroneously counted, disregarded, or diluted.

Trump defeated Clinton in Wisconsin by about 22,000 votes, or less than 1 percentage point. His margin of victory in Michigan was even slimmer, at about 10,700 votes out of 4.8 million cast.

Echoing arguments made against the other state recounts, Trump campaign lawyers said Michigan’s would be impossible to finish by the deadline, putting Michigan voters at risk of being disenfranchised if the 16 electoral votes were not cast.

“You’re not aggrieved if you want on a lark to foist the taxpayers” with a $5 million bill and “the elections officials to go on a wild goose chase,” attorney Gary Gordon told the board.

Stein lawyer Mark Brewer said “95 percent of what you have heard is legally irrelevant” because Stein met all the legal requirements for a recount. Noting GOP criticism that Stein has made baseless allegations of fraud or errors with machines that scan paper ballots, Brewer said: “The original source of the claim that this election was rigged is Mr. Trump.” </s> U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith early Monday morning issued an order for Michigan election officials to begin counting ballots starting at noon.

The ruling follows a request from Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein after a razor-thin margin made the state the last to be called in the November election. President-elect Donald Trump ended up winning Michigan's 16 electoral votes by just 0.2 percentage points, or just under 10,000 votes out of over 5.5 million cast.

"It is inexcusable for Stein to put Michigan voters at risk of paying millions and potentially losing their voice in the Electoral College in the process," Schuette said in a statement.

It is inexcusable for Stein to put MI votes at risk of paying millions and potentially losing their voice in the Elec College. — A.G. Bill Schuette (@SchuetteOnDuty) December 2, 2016 Stein has spearheaded a recount effort in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- three battleground states where Donald Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton. Trump supporters in Wisconsin have unsuccessfully tried to stop the recount in progress there. Stein's campaign, who withdrew a recount request in a Pennsylvania state court, this weekend said she would instead file the lawsuit seeking a statewide recount in federal court Monday morning. Stein has raised nearly $7 million to fund the recount efforts, following news that security experts alerted Clinton's campaign to the possibility of hacks in key counties in those states. Stein is expected to speak at a "Recount Rally" taking place outside the Trump Tower at 10 a.m. Monday morning. At the news conference, she plans to offer an update on the recounts as part of her effort to "fight tooth and nail to verify the accuracy, security, and fairness of the vote," according a Facebook event
The Jill Stein-initiated recounts begin in Wisconsin.