Tag: recount

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Donald Trump Claims He “Won” The Popular Vote

Donald Trump is so rattled by the idea of a recount of the vote in three battleground states that he began defending his own victory in the presidential election via Twitter.

Kellyanne Conway – this is where you take the Blackberry out of the Trumpster’s tiny hands…

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Trump Goes On Twitter Rant Over Voting Recount

President-elect Donald Trump seems a bit unnerved by the announcement by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein that she will request audit/recounts of the voting in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Trump took to Twitter today in a long rant decrying the recount effort based on the recommendations of computer scientists who say there are some irregular patterns in those three states. The discrepancies seem to be based in counties which used only electronic voting.

Of course, you’ll recall Trump had a completely different tone about challenging results and voter fraud just weeks before the election.

Yesterday, the Clinton campaign tacitly announced it would participate, primarily to ensure the effort was fair to all sides. The Clinton team has stated it does not expect the results of the election to change due to the recount.

I personally think this is good thing. There are Americans who are still in disbelief about the outcome of the presidential election, and a recount (paid through donations, not tax dollars) could help folks accept the result more easily.

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President-Elect Trump On Recount Effort: “This Is A Scam”

Statement From President-Elect Donald J. Trump on the Ridiculous Green Party Recount Request:

“The people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, ‘We must accept this result and then look to the future.’

“It is important to point out that with the help of millions of voters across the country, we won 306 electoral votes on Election Day – the most of any Republican since 1988 – and we carried nine of 13 battleground states, 30 of 50 states, and more than 2,600 counties nationwide – the most since President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

“This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn’t even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount. All three states were won by large numbers of voters, especially Pennsylvania, which was won by more than 70,000 votes.

“This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing.”

(source)

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Hillary Clinton Campaign Will Participate In Jill Stein Vote Audit

Marc Elias, general counsel for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, announced today in an essay posted on Medium that the campaign will participate in the upcoming audit/recount effort begun by Jill Stein earlier this week.

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, 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.

If Jill Stein follows through as she has promised and pursues recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, we will take the same approach in those states as well.

We do so fully aware that the number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states — Michigan — well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount. But regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself.

Stein’s team is looking for not only a recount, but a reconciliation of paper records from the election.

At this writing, Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote stands at more than 2.2 million.

Jill Stein has raised over $5.7 million to fund vote audits in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Team Trump has not issued a statement on the audit effort at this point.

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Jill Stein Raises $4.8 Million For Election Recounts In 3 Battleground States

Weeks before Election Day, Donald Trump warned over and over that the system was “rigged.” We might just find out it really was – in his favor.

With Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote currently exceeding 2.1 million, computer cyber scientists at the University of Michigan noting serious “irregularities” in voting patterns in three swing states, plus the now infamous hacking into Clinton campaign emails by Russian actors, many feel it’s possible the election may well have been tampered with.

From The Guardian:

Dozens of professors specialising in cybersecurity, defense, and elections have in the past two days signed an open letter to congressional leaders stating that they are “deeply troubled” by previous reports of foreign interference, and requesting swift action by lawmakers.

“Our country needs a thorough, public congressional investigation into the role that foreign powers played in the months leading up to November,” the academics said in their letter, while noting they did not mean to “question the outcome” of the election itself.

Halderman, the University of Michigan computer security expert, noted that 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.

In response to these issues, Independent presidential candidate Jill Stein has raised over $4.8 million, with a goal of $7 million, to pay for a recount/audit of the voting in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Stein has publicly stated the effort is not to aid Clinton but “to shine a light on just how untrustworthy the U.S. election system is.”

While I personally don’t think the election results will be overturned by this exercise, I think a huge segment of the American electorate will feel better having the (surprising) votes in these three states examined.