Hillary Clinton announced she will join Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein’s recount effort in Wisconsin.
Stein filed for a recount in Wisconsin on Friday after quickly raising $5 million in donations to challenge election results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — states won by President-elect Donald Trump.
Political analysts agree that overturning the election is an impossible task.
Clinton’s general counsel Marc Elias admitted he had no evidence of voter fraud in his post on Medium.com on Saturday.
“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,” he wrote, “but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.”
Elias was quick to point out that Clinton was listening to “concerns” of election hacking expressed by a group of computer specialists.
“We take these concerns extremely seriously,” Elias wrote. “We certainly understand the heartbreak felt by so many who worked so hard to elect Hillary Clinton, and it is a fundamental principle of our democracy to ensure that every vote is properly counted.”
The deadline to file for a recount in Pennsylvania is Monday (Nov. 28) and in Michigan it is Wednesday (Nov. 30). But getting recounts in those states will not be easy.
In order for Stein to get a recount in Pennsylvania or Michigan, she must first prove that statewide voter fraud occurred.
The burden to prove the election was hacked is even greater in Michigan where only paper ballots were used, not computers.
Elias also acknowledged that, in Michigan, Trump’s margin of victory over Clinton “well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount.”
That’s why, Elias says, Clinton did not challenge the election results until she was urged to by her heartbroken supporters.
