Jill Stein hopes to request election recounts in battleground states – The Guardian

Fuente Web

Jill Stein, the 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 $2.5m fund she said was needed to request reviews of the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

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. “We deserve elections we can trust.”

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%. In Pennsylvania, where his margin is 1.2%, the deadline falls on Monday. In Michigan, where the Trump lead is currently just 0.3%, the deadline is Wednesday 30 November.

The Guardian previously disclosed that a loose coalition of academics and activists concerned about the election’s security is preparing to deliver a report detailing its concerns to congressional committee chairs and federal authorities early next week, according to two people involved.

“I’m interested in verifying the vote,” said Dr Barbara Simons, an adviser to the US election assistance commission and expert on electronic voting. “We need to have post-election ballot audits.” Simons is understood to have contributed analysis to the effort but declined to characterise the precise nature of her involvement.

A second group of analysts, led by the National Voting Rights Institute founder John Bonifaz and Professor Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan’s center for computer security and society, is also taking part in the push for a review.

In a blogpost earlier on Wednesday, Halderman said paper ballots and voting equipment should be examined in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. “Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts,” he said.

Clinton’s defeat to Donald Trump followed the release by US intelligence agencies of public assessments that Russian hackers were behind intrusions into regional electoral computer systems and the theft of emails from Democratic officials before the election.

You can read the full story here.