The Green party candidate in the U.S. presidential election, Jill Stein, has announced that the party would file for a recount of votes in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Stein, who suspected electoral fraud in the election, said the recount would check the accuracy of the machine-counted vote tallies in these states in order to ensure the integrity of the election.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Stein/Baraka Green Party Campaign launched the votes recount funding effort on Wednesday.
NAN also reports that by Thursday, Stein/Barak campaign has already raised about $4,513, 852; $23million, more than the target of $4.5 million needed to file the recount cost for two of the states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and pay the fees for lawyers.
Jill Stein, who is leading the campaign, said between 6 and 7 million dollars would be needed to cover the entire costs including filing for recount in the third state-Michigan.
The deadline for filing for a recount in Wisconsin is this Friday, November 25, at a cost of $1.1 million, while the filing fees and deadlines for Pennsylvania and Michigan respectively are 0.5 million dollars by November 28 and 0.6 million dollars by November 30.
The Stein/Baraka campaign, along with election integrity advocates, has embarked on massive fundraising effort to obtain the needed funds before Friday afternoon.
“Congratulations on meeting the recount costs for Wisconsin! Raising money to pay for the first round so quickly is a miraculous feat and a tribute to the power of grassroots organising.
“Now that we have completed funding Wisconsin’s recount (which is due on Friday), we have begun to tackle the funding for Pennsylvania’s recount (due Monday).
“Then we will focus on raising funds for Michigan’s recount (due Wednesday),” Stein said.
NAN reports that there have been concerns over the credibility of the election in the battleground states where Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump by about one per cent.
The concerns have also heightened recently as Clinton’s lead over Trump in popular votes has surpassed two million as additional votes are being counted in the presidential election.
If the elections are recounted and results found to have been compromised, it could affect Trump’s election due at Electoral College on December 19.
NAN reports that in the U.S, where the difference between two candidates is 0.5 per cent or less, government funds the recount, but where it is more than one per cent, the recount is funded by the filing candidate.
“After a divisive and painful presidential race, reported hacks into voter and party databases and individual email accounts are causing many Americans to wonder if our election results are reliable.
“These concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified. We deserve elections we can trust,” Stein insisted.
The Stein/Baraka campaign had noted that the election was surrounded by hacks adding, the use of systems that have been demonstrated to be easily hacked should concern every American.
“Some of the machines used in Wisconsin, have been banned in California after they were shown to be highly vulnerable to hacking and malicious reprogramming, due to the lack of security features.
“Leading election security experts have been calling for exactly this sort of recount as a critical safeguard against cyber-attacks.”
The Green Party Platform called for “publicly-owned, open source voting equipment and deploy it across the nation to ensure high national standards, performance, transparency and accountability.”
“It also called for the use of verifiable paper ballots; and institute mandatory automatic random precinct recounts to ensure a high level of accuracy in election results.”
“Election integrity experts have independently identified Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as states where “statistical anomalies” raised concerns.
“Our effort to recount votes in those states is not intended to help Hillary Clinton.
“These recounts are part of an election integrity movement to attempt to shine a light on just how untrustworthy the U.S. election system is,” it said.
NAN recalls that Trump had won the November 8 presidential election based on the Electoral College while Clinton, who lost the election, led Trump by over two million popular votes as at Wednesday. (NAN)