posted November 25, 2016 09:27 PM            

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Washington (CNN)Green Party officials filed Friday for a recount in Wisconsin, following reports of voting discrepancies, and were seeking a deeper investigation into the election results, which handed the state to Donald Trump two weeks ago.

Wisconsin Green Party co-chairman George Martin said that they were seeking a "reconciliation of paper records" -- a request that would go one step further than a simple recount, spurring, he said, an investigation into the integrity of the state's voting system.

"This is a process, a first step to examine whether our electoral democracy is working," Martin said.

The announcement came as Green Party candidate Jill Stein's Thanksgiving fundraising blitz passed $5 million. The money is well beyond the $2 million mark the Green Party initially set, and Wisconsin party officials said that any additional money not used for the recount would be used to train Green Party candidates for local office. The goal as of Friday was to raise $7 million.

"We don't know, and we think the forensic computer experts have raised serious questions. What we do know is that this was a hack-riddled election, we saw hacks into voter databases, into party databases, into individual email accounts. We know that there were attempts made broadly on state voter databases and we know that we have an election system that relies a computer system that is wide open to hacks," Stein told CNN's John Berman Thursday. "It's extremely vulnerable, Americans deserve to have confidence in our vote."

Late Friday afternoon, the Wisconsin Elections Board said it had received the petition from Stein and the Green Party and "is preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes."

"We have assembled an internal team to direct the recount, we have been in close consultation with our county clerk partners, and have arranged for legal representation by the Wisconsin Department of Justice," Wisconsin Elections Board Administrator Michael Haas said. "We plan to hold a teleconference meeting for county clerks next week and anticipate the recount will begin late in the week after the Stein campaign has paid the recount fee, which we are still calculating."

Hacking experts alerted the Clinton campaign earlier this week it was possible, based on voter low turnouts in some counties with electronic voting, that voting systems might have been hacked. But nobody has presented any evidence yet that they were tampered with.

Even if Stein and others succeed in winning recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, it's unclear they would be enough to swing the election from Trump to Hillary Clinton, with Trump holding leads as big as more than 60,000 votes in Pennsylvania. When Florida officials launched their recount in 2000, the margin was just 537 votes.

The Clinton campaign has stayed out of the recount debate, which sprouted up over the Thanksgiving holiday, even though it was a conference call that election hacking experts had with her campaign staff which led to the drive.

The Trump campaign and his top advisers have dismissed the effort. Former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway tweeted on Thanksgiving that their opponents were being sore losers.

"Look who 'can't accept the election results' Hillary Clinton Supporters Call for Vote Recount in Battleground States," Conway wrote.

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posted November 25, 2016 09:57 PM            

There were no reports of voting discrepancies.
No reports
No evidence

posted November 25, 2016 11:35 PM            

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Originally posted by Randall:
Talk about sour grapes.

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Pot calling the kettle black.

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The election isn't over in North Carolina where the governor's race is still too close to call. Incumbent Republican governor Pat McCrory trails his Democratic challenger Roy Cooper by a few thousand votes. On Tuesday, McCrory officially requested a recount. This comes after weeks of allegations from his campaign of widespread voter fraud. There's little evidence to support that. From member station WUNC, Jeff Tiberii reports.

JEFF TIBERII, BYLINE: The top of the ticket went Republican here two weeks ago. Donald Trump won by nearly 3 percent. U.S. Senator Richard Burr finished almost six points ahead, but Governor Pat McCrory trails by less than two-tenths of a percent.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) Our vote counts. Our vote counts. Our vote counts.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Vote.

TIBERII: Protesters in Durham recently demanded that all votes be tallied following claims of fraud. Meanwhile, McCrory's campaign alleges that felons and dead people voted across the state. But there is presently no evidence of widespread fraud, and it does not appear McCrory's camp is challenging anywhere near enough votes to sway the outcome. Morgan Jackson is a Cooper strategist.

MORGAN JACKSON: It's a shameful thing that when you lose an election, the only thing you can do about it is to try to say that something wasn't done correctly. They have no - I mean it's absurd, these allegations they're throwing out about voters, and they're just making them up out of thin air.

TIBERII: As more votes have been tabulated since Election Day, Cooper's lead has actually increased, but the governor refuses to concede. McCrory spokesman Ricky Diaz.

RICKY DIAZ: Voter fraud's like insider trading. If you're not looking for it, you don't find it.

TIBERII: The governor's campaign maintains that between any possible fraud and the eligibility of thousands of provisional ballots, the election isn't over.

DIAZ: It's a spit in the face to voters who have waited in line to cast their votes for Roy Cooper to seek to (laughter) proclaim that an outcome to an election has yet to be decided.

TIBERII: Republicans have filed protests in dozens of counties over absentee voters who cast ballots but died before Election Day and others accused of voting in two states. However, there are only several hundred votes in question, nowhere near the roughly 8,000 that separate the two men. The escalating rhetoric concerns David McLennan, who teaches political science at Meredith College.

DAVID MCLENNAN: I worry about it from the 40,000-foot view that, you know, what this is saying to the average citizens of North Carolina without evidence. I mean it's - we need to have a legitimate electoral system for municipal elections, state elections and that people have faith in it so they go into the next election and vote.

TIBERII: Additional legal challenges from McCrory's campaign and his allies will slow down the process of declaring a winner even further. The governor's inauguration is scheduled for January 7. Hopefully this race is over by then. For NPR News, I'm Jeff Tiberii in Durham, N.C.

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http://www.npr.org/2016/11/23/503182759/republican-pat-mccrory-requests-recount-in-north-carolina-governors-race

posted November 25, 2016 11:41 PM            

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Updated at 5:55 p.m. ET

The Wisconsin Elections Commission announced Friday that it would hold a statewide recount of the presidential vote. The move was in response to petitions from two candidates, the Green Party's Jill Stein and independent Rocky Roque De La Fuente.

Federal law requires that all recounts be finished 35 days after the election, which is Dec. 13. One or both of the candidates will be required to pay for the recount.

"We have assembled an internal team to direct the recount, we have been in close consultation with our county clerk partners, and have arranged for legal representation by the Wisconsin Department of Justice," said Wisconsin Elections Commission Director Mike Haas in a statement.

"We plan to hold a teleconference meeting for county clerks next week and anticipate the recount will begin late in the week after the Stein campaign has paid the recount fee, which we are still calculating."

Haas added that the process is very detail-oriented and he is concerned that some counties will be challenged to finish on time. In a recount, ballots must be examined to determine voter intent before being counted.

Stein has been leading the effort to force general election recounts in certain swing states. Her effort continues to gain steam — and money.

On Wednesday she announced she would demand recounts in three states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. President-elect Donald Trump narrowly won Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and Michigan is still too close to call.

To cover the cost of the recounts, Stein launched a fundraising campaign, which has raised more than $5 million in less than three days.

Stein's fundraiser website explicitly says the campaign is not an effort to help Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, but to "ensure the integrity of our elections." Clinton has not commented on the efforts.

The deadline to file for a recount in Pennsylvania is Monday and Michigan's is Wednesday.

Before the announcement was made, Haas called a potential recount "uncharted territory," according to Laurel White with Wisconsin Public Radio. White reported:

"Haas said the recount would cost at least $500,000.
"The commission is reviewing state law to determine when that money would be due.

" 'There's a little bit of ambiguity in the statutes,' Haas said. 'In one place, it states that the fee must be paid at the time the petition is filed; another statute indicates once the petition is filed, that's when our agency calculates an estimate.'
"Once a recount order is issued by the commission, clerks across the state have 13 days to complete it, Haas said."
Stein initially set a fundraising goal of $2.5 million. As donations started pouring in, that goal jumped to $4.5 million, as New York Magazine's Yashar Ali pointed out on Twitter.

By Friday, the goal had jumped again, to $7 million. The campaign says that will go to cover filing fees, attorney fees and other associated costs.

Donations are still rolling in, but as Stein's fundraising website states, money doesn't necessarily mean the recounts are assured: "We cannot guarantee a recount will happen in any of these states we are targeting. We can only pledge we will demand recounts in those states."

If the recounts don't happen, what will become of all that money? Stein's website says any "surplus will also go toward election integrity efforts and to promote voting system reform." It did not specify what those efforts would be.

As NPR's Camila Domonoske told the Newscast unit, "Some security and election experts have publicly called for paper ballots to be checked in Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan, to make sure that the computers that counted those ballots weren't hacked." But, she says, "There's no evidence that the electronic machines were hacked or the election was compromised."

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posted November 26, 2016 10:18 AM            

Let them have their recount and move forward.