Tag Archives: election recount

Durham County must complete a recount of 90,000 votes by 7 p.m. Monday, according to a State Board of Elections order issued late Thursday. The state board voted 3-2 along party lines Wednesday to order a machine recount of votes cast during early voting in Durham County, backing a request from Republicans and Gov. Pat McCrory’s campaign. The three Republicans on the board voted for the recount, saying that the late addition of the 90,000 votes to the statewide tally on election night constituted an “irregularity.” The state board’s decision overturned the Durham County Board of Elections, also controlled by Republicans, which had rejected the recount request as baseless. The recount could finally settle the governor’s race between McCrory and Democrat Roy Cooper, the state’s attorney general.

Pennsylvania: Philladelphia allows recount, rejects forensic audit of voting machines | Philadelphia Inquirer

The Philadelphia city commissioners have agreed to recount some ballots cast in the city, as requested by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, but rejected a forensic audit of how those voting machines work. The commissioners, in a brief meeting Thursday, agreed to start recounting on Friday ballots in 75 divisions after Stein’s campaign filed at least three affidavits for each division from voters there asking for a recount. They rejected requests for seven other divisions. Philadelphia has 1,686 voting divisions. Ilann Maazel, an attorney for Stein’s campaign, told the commissioners the state Election Code allows for an examination of the machines. Citing examples of hacking of elections computer systems in Illinois and Arizona, along with the Democratic National Committee’s emails, he said a forensic audit of Philadelphia’s voting machine software was the only way to determine whether they had been hacked. “To examine means to look inside,” Maazel said.

Pennsylvania: Philadelphia moves forward with presidential election recount | PennLive

Philadelphia will recount ballots cast in 75 voting precincts on Friday, marking the first major success of Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s push to audit the state’s presidential election results. On Thursday, county election officials approved 75 of 82 voter petitions. In those precincts, voting machines will be recanvassed–essentially running them again to review the vote totals. An undetermined number of paper absentee, emergency and provisional ballots from those precincts will also be recounted. “It’s not a great number (of ballots),” Deputy Commissioner Fred Voigt said. “Keep in mind that something like 700,000 votes were cast in Philadelphia County. You’re talking (1,686) polling places. This is a speck.” Less than 5 percent of the county’s total precincts will be subject to the recount. According to Pennsylvania Department of State data, Hillary Clinton received 563,275 votes countywide compared to 105,876 for Donald Trump. Stein, meanwhile, received 6,486, slightly less than 1 percent of the total number cast.

Pennsylvania: Trump team moves to block Pennsylvania recount | Politico

Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump have moved to block the vote recount in Pennsylvania, adding to complaints filed to stop similar proceedings in Michigan and Wisconsin. “Despite being no more than a blip on the electoral radar, Stein has now commandeered Pennsylvania’s electoral process, with an eye toward doing the same to the Electoral College,” the complaint filed Thursday states. “There is no evidence — or even an allegation — that any tampering with Pennsylvania’s voting systems actually occurred.” The filing comes on the heels of the Trump camp’s complaint reported earlier Thursday in Michigan dismissing Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s claims of impropriety during the 2016 presidential race, and a day after the the Wisconsin Republican Party logged a complaint with the Federal Election Committee arguing that Stein was seeking to benefit Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton.

Wisconsin: ‘We’re Going to Get This Done’: Wisconsin Vote Recount Is Underway | The New York Times

The basement room was cleared of pens with blue or black ink, items that could mar paper ballots. Anyone wearing a coat was told to leave it in the hallway, in case something nefarious was hidden underneath. Water bottles, purses and keys were placed on the floor, leaving the large plastic tables smooth and uncluttered. And at 9 a.m., with the brisk rap of a county clerk’s wooden gavel, the first recount of the 2016 presidential election was underway in Wisconsin, with another recount pending in the neighboring battleground state of Michigan. For the next 12 days, election officials across all 72 counties in Wisconsin will work days, nights and weekends to recount nearly three million ballots, an effort initiated and financed by Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate, who has suggested that voting machines in the state could have been hacked. Very few people expect that the recount will reverse the outcome of the election. President-elect Donald J. Trump triumphed here over Hillary Clinton by 22,177 votes, and in Michigan by 10,704 votes, a margin that a lawyer for Mrs. Clinton, Marc Elias, said had never been overcome in a recount. Legal challenges to the vote in Pennsylvania, where Mr. Trump leads by 70,638 votes, are also underway.

Wisconsin: Recount begins in Wisconsin, and it feels like Election Day again | Minneapolis Star Tribune

In the St. Croix County government building, just across the river from Minnesota, Thursday felt a bit like Election Day. Once again, county officials lugged in the heavy machines used to count ballots, set up a table for people to check in and prepared to brief a team of elections workers about the long day that lay ahead. Shortly after 9 a.m., after she’d ensured that everyone and everything was in place — the ballot counters, the political-party observers, the coffee pot and doughnuts — St. Croix County Clerk Cindy Campbell welcomed the 30 or so people gathered in the county’s board room. “This is a recount for the president of the United States,” she said. “It’s something I thought I’d never say, but we’re doing this.” Recount operations began across Wisconsin’s 72 counties on Thursday, following a request from Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who is footing the bill for the nearly $3.5 million effort. It is the first statewide recount prompted by a candidate since 2000, when Florida carried out a much-watched recount to settle the race between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. Over the next 12 days, officials will recount nearly 3 million ballots.

Wisconsin: New evidence finds anomalies in Wisconsin vote, but no conclusive evidence of fraud | Walter R. Mebane, Jr./The Washington Post

Did the outcome of voting for president in Wisconsin accurately reflect the intentions of the electors? Concerns have been raised about errors in vote counts produced using electronic technology — were machines hacked? — and a recount may occur. Some reports involving statistical analysis of the results has been discussed in the media recently. These analyses, though, rely on data at the county level. Technology, demographics and other important characteristics of the electorate vary within counties, making it difficult to resolve conclusively whether voting technology (did voters cast paper or electronic ballots?) affected the final tabulation of the vote for president. For this reason, I have examined ward-level data. Wards are the smallest aggregation unit at which vote counts are reported in Wisconsin, and many wards have fewer than 100 voters. My analysis, which relies on using election forensics techniques designed to identify electoral fraud, reveals some reasons to be suspicious about vote patterns in Wisconsin. To be very clear, my analysis cannot prove whether fraud occurred, but it does suggest that it would be valuable to conduct an election audit to resolve such concerns definitively.

National: Recounts Are Really About A Cyberattack Probe | international Business Times

Neither Jill Stein nor Hillary Clinton are realistically expecting the outcome of the 2016 presidential election to change if there are statewide recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Instead, Stein is pushing for contentious and exhaustive recount efforts in each state in part to draw attention to the integrity of the nationwide voting system after a campaign season chock-full of foreign interferences, cyberattacks on the Democratic Party and even a purported hack on electronic voting machines. Stein raised nearly $6.3 million in donations toward her goal of filing for recounts in three key battleground states where Trump won by small margins. “After a presidential election tarnished by the use of outdated and unreliable machines and accusations of irregularities and hacks, people of all political persuasions are asking if our election results are reliable,” Stein said in a statement on Monday. “We must recount the votes so we can build trust in our election system.”

National: What Stein is getting from recount | The Hill

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein’s call for a recount has won her headlines and money, both of which could prove beneficial to the politician and her party going forward. Stein’s call for a recount in Wisconsin might have come as a surprise to some observers. She won just 1 percent of the vote in the state and finished a distant fourth. Democrat Hillary Clinton, who won the national popular vote, finished a close second to Republican Donald Trump in the Badger State. But it wasn’t her party asking for the recount. It was Stein, who has repeatedly shown a willingness to step into the public limelight to battle with both major parties. Stein hit the Clinton machine for piggy-backing on her recount efforts and for failing to take the threat of election hacking seriously. Seen as largely an afterthought during the presidential race, Stein is receiving heavy news coverage from the media for her efforts. And by tapping into Democratic angst over Trump’s surprise victory over Clinton, she’s building a fundraising apparatus greater than she had before.

National: Recount Bids in 3 States Seem the Longest of Long Shots | The New York Times

It has been nearly a month since Donald J. Trump beat Hillary Clinton to win the presidency. But efforts continue in three battleground states to take another look at the election results. On Thursday, Wisconsin is set to begin the labor-intensive task of reviewing nearly three million ballots in a recount across all of the state’s 72 counties. Michigan is likely to follow suit starting on Friday. And in Pennsylvania, there are persisting legal challenges to the presidential results as well. It is extremely unlikely that this attempt — spearheaded by Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate — will prompt any of these states to flip to Mrs. Clinton, as Mr. Trump leads by a combined margin of around 100,000 votes. Mrs. Clinton would need to be declared the winner in all three states to reverse the Electoral College outcome.

Editorials: The US election recount is a long shot – but the alternative is catastrophe | Rebecca Solnit/The Guardian

When big changes and dangers arise, you have to think big. You don’t put out a forest fire with a glass of water. Thinking small can prevent you from even recognizing trouble, let alone your options for overcoming it. There’s never been a time when thinking big matters more than now. Many across the United States are now trying to figure out how to survive Trump, but it may still be possible to stop him. His regime is not yet inevitable. It’s a long shot, but one worth trying, the way someone diagnosed with a disease with a 3% survival rate might want to do what it takes to try to be part of the 3%. You don’t get there if you give up at the outset. Trump represents a catastrophe on a scale many seem to have trouble grasping, an attack on what remains democratic and uncorrupted in our old and messy system of government, a threat to international stability, to efforts to address climate change, and to human rights at home and around the world. Is it possible to prevent him from taking power? Why not explore the wildest possibilities, when the alternative is surrendering to the worst? It may be very possible – but only if we imagine it is possible and work to make the possible the actual.

Michigan: Jill Stein Files Petition for Hand Recount of Michigan Ballots | Wall Street Journal

Green Party candidate Jill Stein on Wednesday filed a petition for a full hand recount of presidential votes in Michigan, the last state to officially certify its election results this week. The state on Monday certified that President-elect Donald Trump had officially won by slightly more than 10,000 votes, a 0.22% margin. Ms. Stein, who has also successfully called for a recount in Wisconsin and has filed a lawsuit seeking one in Pennsylvania, alleges that machines used to count the votes in these states could have been hacked or tampered with. Barring a court challenge by Mr. Trump, the recount in Michigan is expected to start Friday. At a press conference, Ms. Stein’s campaign said it had paid $970, 000 at the time that the petition was filed. Her recount efforts have raised over $6.6 million, and Ms. Stein has said her campaign will shoulder the cost of the process. Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said in a statement Wednesday that there is “no evidence of hacking or fraud, or even a credible allegation of any tampering.” She added that Michigan taxpayers could be paying up $4 million, in addition to the $1 million that Ms. Stein will have to foot.

Michigan: Jill Stein’s Michigan recount efforts | CBS

Green Party candidate Jill Stein formally filed for a recount in Michigan Wednesday, the third state on her list. “After a presidential election tarnished by the use of outdated and unreliable machines and accusations of irregularities, people of all political persuasions are asking if our election results are reliable,” Stein said Wednesday. “We must recount the votes so we can build trust in our election system. We need to verify the vote in this and every election so that Americans can be sure we have a fair, secure and accurate voting system.” Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said in a statement Wednesday that it is “unusual” for a candidate that received such a small share of the vote — Stein got just 1 percent in Michigan — to request a recount, “especially when there is no evidence of hacking or fraud, or even a credible allegation of any tampering.”

Michigan: GOP warns recount puts Michigan’s electors at risk | The Detroit News

Michigan Republican Party leaders warned Tuesday a massive and costly statewide recount of the presidential election could drag on for weeks and cost the state its final say in who occupies the White House next year. Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount request, expected to be filed Wednesday afternoon, will trigger a hurried sprint to meet a Dec. 13 federal deadline for Michigan to declare a final winner in the presidential contest, GOP officials said. “If we don’t have this process over by Dec. 13, we certainly jeopardize Michigan’s electors and risk disenfranchising all of Michigan’s voters from the election,” said Eric Doster, general counsel for the Michigan Republican Party. State election officials say their reading of 19th century federal law shows the state has to finalize the election results six days before the Dec. 19 meeting of the Electoral College, when each state’s electors cast the final vote for president. Michigan gets 16 electors who are supposed to cast their votes in the state Senate’s chamber.

Nevada: De La Fuente files for recount in Nevada | KOLO

After withdrawing his presidential recount petition in Wisconsin, “Rocky” Roque De La Fuente almost immediately filed for a recount in Nevada. De La Fuente was the first to file for a recount in Wisconsin but withdrew his petition when Jill Stein duplicated his effort and the estimated cost of the recount soared to more than $3.5 million. He has already posted payment for the recount in Nevada. “I’ve made this decision for a number of reasons,” said De La Fuente. “First, Wisconsin obviously made a recount cost-prohibitive for a citizen with standing. Jill (Stein) was able to tap into a Democratic base of donors to raise more than $6.2 million in just a few days, so she can afford to pursue the issue there.”

North Carolina: Partial Recount Ordered in North Carolina Governor’s Race | The New York Times

Acceding to the wishes of the embattled Gov. Pat McCrory, the North Carolina State Board of Elections on Wednesday ordered a recount of roughly 94,000 votes in Durham County, a move that could help resolve a contested governor’s race here that remains undecided three weeks after Election Day. Mr. McCrory, a Republican, has trailed by a thin margin in the unofficial statewide count since the Nov. 8 election. He has declined to concede the race to his opponent, Roy Cooper, a Democrat and the state’s attorney general. Mr. McCrory’s campaign has raised questions about voting irregularities in dozens of counties, but Democrats have dismissed them as frivolous or inaccurate. Until Wednesday night, many of the rulings of the state elections board and 100 county boards — all of which are controlled by Republicans — have tended to go against Mr. McCrory. Mr. Cooper’s campaign and liberal groups have been urging Mr. McCrory to concede.

North Carolina: Elections board orders Durham County recount in party-line vote | News & Observer

The State Board of Elections voted 3-2 along party lines Wednesday to order a machine recount of 90,000 votes in Durham County, backing a request from Republicans and Gov. Pat McCrory’s campaign. The three Republicans on the board voted for the recount, saying that the late addition of the 90,000 votes to the statewide tally on election night constituted an “irregularity.” The two Democrats on the board opposed the recount, arguing that no evidence suggested any mistakes in counting Durham votes. “What harm would it do to scan these votes and count them?” said board member and retired Judge James Baker, a Republican. “It’s not likely to change anything. There was enough of an irregularity to make people wonder.”

Wisconsin: Stein won’t appeal machine recount; GOP files complaint | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Green Party candidate Jill Stein will not appeal a judge’s rejection of her lawsuit to force a hand recount of nearly 3 million presidential ballots in Wisconsin, clearing the way for machines to be used in the statewide effort beginning Thursday. Also Wednesday, Stein filed another recount petition in Michigan and the Republican Party of Wisconsin filed a federal elections complaint against both Stein and Democrat Hillary Clinton. The complaint alleges that Stein — who received only a small share of the vote — is improperly fundraising to pay for a recount that primarily benefits Clinton, the second-place finisher behind GOP President-elect Donald Trump. The fundraising amounts to improper coordination between the two campaigns, the complaint to the Federal Elections Commission alleges. “Clinton stands as the only actor that would benefit from a recount taking place in Wisconsin or elsewhere,” the complaint reads. “As outlined below, the Clinton campaign’s direct involvement in the recount process, which was announced well before the recount itself was paid for and finalized, demonstrates a clear link between the actions of the Stein campaign and the strategic goals of Hillary for America.” The complaint is based on the public actions and statements of the Clinton and Stein campaigns and not on any inside information.

Verified Voting in the News: How the Wisconsin Recount Could Help Fix American Elections | TIME

Even if the recount of Wisconsin’s election results doesn’t change a single vote, the scrutiny could have one useful side effect: Spotlighting how scattershot the American voting system has become. Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein is leading the effort for a recount after claims surfaced that there was statistical evidence the state’s results were suspicious. Many supporters of the recount worry that Russian hackers might have thrown the contest to President-elect Donald Trump, who won the state by 24,081 votes out of nearly 3 million cast. Skeptics have thrown cold water on the claim, arguing that the data does not support this claim in any convincing way. But right now it’s almost impossible to disprove the suspicion that voting machines were somehow compromised because Wisconsin’s voting machines are so inconsistent from one location to the next.

National: So, what does it mean for there to be an election recount? | Public Radio International

In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, Green Party candidate Jill Stein is paying for a recount in Wisconsin, with recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania likely to join. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has agreed to participate in the recount effort. Recounts typically do not reverse election results, but that notion hasn’t stopped President-elect Donald Trump from tweeting, without evidence, that there was “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.” “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” the president-elect wrote in another unsubstantiated tweet. Trump won the election by less than 100,000 votes across four swing states.

Michigan: Presidential recount could cost taxpayers nearly $1M | Detroit Free Press

Taxpayers could be on the hook for close to $1 million — or more — for a proposed recount of Michigan’s presidential election results, Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said Tuesday. Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who took just more than 1% of the presidential vote in the Nov. 8 election, has announced she will request a statewide recount by Wednesday’s deadline as a check against possible counting mistakes or fraud. Stein is being charged $125 per precinct, a cost originally estimated at $787,500 in total. But Michigan Elections Director Chris Thomas said Monday the actual cost charged to Stein could be around $900,000, based on the final size of the recount and the addition of absentee ballot precincts. Any cost beyond the $125 per precinct would be borne by taxpayers at the county level, he said. Stein’s campaign said in a Tuesday news release it expects to pay a Michigan filing fee of $973,250.

Nevada: Independent candidate files for recount of sample of Nevada presidential ballots | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente, an independent candidate for president who garnered less than 1 percent of the vote in Nevada, filed late Tuesday for a recount of a sample of the state’s presidential ballots. De La Fuente identified 93 precincts to be recounted and paid $14,154.98 to the secretary of state’s office ahead of the 5 p.m. deadline to cover the cost. In the November election, De La Fuente came in dead last in the presidential contest on the Nevada ballot, even trailing “None of these candidates.” He received just 2,552 votes, or 0.23 percent. Democratic contender Hillary Clinton won Nevada with 47.9 percent of the vote, beating Republican President-elect Donald Trump by a little more than 2 percent. In a statement Tuesday, De La Fuente said he ran in the Democratic presidential primary, then ran in the general election in various states as an independent and as the nominee of both the Reform Party and the American Delta Party in “an effort to champion election reform.” Under state law, the secretary of state’s office has five days to complete a recount of the precincts requested — two each in Carson City, Douglas, Mineral and Nye counties and the rest in Clark County, the state’s population hub and home to about 2 million people.

Nevada: Republicans push back: Debate over seeking recount in states won by Clinton | Fox News

The countdown is on to see whether efforts by the left to call for recounts in this year’s presidential election actually make a difference in the final tallies. Attention continues to swirl around Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s push for recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan – states where Donald Trump had small margins of victory over Hillary Clinton. Some experts though question whether the same attention should be given to states Clinton won by similar margins. For comparison the latest election tally shows Clinton winning Nevada by 26,434 votes, only slightly larger than Trump’s 24 thousand vote lead in Wisconsin.

North Carolina: NC GOP: Durham recount could resolve governor’s election within days | News & Observer

After the State Board of Elections effectively rejected Republican protests about ineligible voters, Durham County is the last point of contention in the unresolved governor’s race – and the N.C. Republican Party said Tuesday that a recount there could resolve the election within days. The board will meet Wednesday afternoon to review a request for a recount of early votes in Durham County. As the final absentee and provisional ballots are tallied this week, Democrat Roy Cooper had a lead of around 9,800 votes late Tuesday over Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. McCrory is entitled to a statewide recount if the margin remains under 10,000 votes. Cooper got 79 percent of the vote in Durham County, and the Democratic stronghold has been a frequent target of Republican election complaints.

Pennsylvania: Court hearing set to consider vote recount | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Green Party-backed push for a recount of Pennsylvania’s presidential election results will get its day in court. Commonwealth Court has scheduled a hearing for 10 a.m. Monday in Harrisburg to consider the recount effort pushed by former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, according to a court order Tuesday. Ms. Stein’s campaign helped coordinate a legal challenge this week seeking the statewide recount, contending the Nov. 8 election was illegal and its results inaccurate. It cited as evidence research by computer scientists pointing to potential hacking of electronic voting machines, as well as numerous news reports of hacking, possibly by foreign governments, into email accounts associated with the Democratic National Committee and the campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton. In scheduling Monday’s hearing, the court order said little about the proceeding. But it said “a conclusive decision” on the matter must be reached by Dec. 13, the deadline for Pennsylvania’s electors to declare who wins the state’s 20 electoral votes.

Wisconsin: Judge refuses to order hand recount of votes in Wisconsin | Chicago Tribune

A Wisconsin judge refused on Tuesday to order local election workers to conduct the state’s upcoming presidential recount completely by hand Tuesday, finding that nothing suggests the state’s electronic tabulating machines have been hacked. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has been trying to make the case that Wisconsin’s tabulating machines could have been compromised in a cyberattack and a hand recount is the only way to tell for sure. But Dane County Circuit Court Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn concluded Stein’s attorneys failed to show any hard evidence the machines were attacked and are unreliable. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by about 22,000 votes in Wisconsin, but Stein has alleged — without evidence — that the results may have been hacked. She asked for a recount last week, saying the state needs to be sure.

Wisconsin: Jill Stein gets her recount bill | Politico

For Jill Stein, it’s time to put her money where her mouth is. After raising $6.5 million and taking steps to initiate recounts in a trio of states Hillary Clinton lost in the Nov. 8 presidential election, Stein has to now pay for the recounts. The estimated costs vary for the three states where she’s fueling recount efforts —Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — but combined, it’s within the amount of money Stein has raised so far. Stein on Tuesday met the 4:30 CT filing deadline and paid the nearly $3.5 million required for a recount, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Earlier in the day, fringe independent presidential candidate Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente withdrew his petition for a recount. The recount starts Thursday. In Michigan, Stein has until Wednesday to request a formal recount and must pay $973,250 to underwrite the costs, according to the Michigan secretary of state’s office. Her campaign on Monday notified the Michigan Board of State Canvassers of its intent to request — but has yet to file paperwork. Michigan officials expect Stein to pay the fee and initiate the recount before the deadline.

Wisconsin: Stein sues after Wisconsin refuses to order hand recounts | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel