Jill Stein: Recount Wisconsin

Wisconsin elections board says it has petition from Green Party and Jill Stein, and will prep presidential recount. https://t.co/DoP35BdMKU pic.twitter.com/3sg5lFEEqJ

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) November 25, 2016

Apparently, a recount will happen in Wisconsin.

From Reuters:

Wisconsin's election board agreed on Friday to conduct a statewide recount of votes cast in the presidential race, as requested by a Green Party candidate seeking similar reviews in two other states where Donald Trump scored narrow wins.

The recount process, including an examination by hand of the nearly 3 million ballots tabulated in Wisconsin, is expected to begin late next week after Green Party candidate Jill Stein's campaign has paid the required fee, the Elections Commission said.

The state faces a Dec. 13 federal deadline to complete the recount, which may require canvassers in Wisconsin's 72 counties to work evenings and weekends to finish the job in time, according to the commission.

...Her effort may have given a ray of hope to dispirited Clinton supporters, but the chance of overturning the overall result of the Nov. 8 election is considered very slim, even if all three states go along with the recount.

The Green Party candidate, who garnered little more than 1 percent of the nationwide popular vote herself, said on Friday that she was seeking to verify the integrity of the U.S. voting system, not to undo Trump's victory.

While there was no evidence of tampering or voting errors in the election, only a thorough review of results from the three states at issue will reassure Americans, Stein said.

...Although Trump won narrowly in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the margins make it highly unlikely any recounts would end up giving Clinton a win in all three states, which would be needed for the overall election result to change. Trump beat Clinton in Pennsylvania by 70,010 votes, in Michigan by 10,704 votes and in Wisconsin by 27,257 votes.

Stein's timing really bothers me.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Wisconsin's last statewide recount was in 2011 for a state Supreme Court seat and the outcome did not change. The recount showed Justice David Prosser defeated challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by 7,004 votes — a slightly tighter margin than the 7,316-vote victory he had in initial returns.

That recount took more than a month. This one would have to happen more quickly because of a federal law that says states must complete presidential recounts within 35 days of the election to ensure their electoral votes are counted. This year, that's Dec. 13.

"You may potentially have the state electoral votes at stake if it doesn't get done by then," said Haas.

A lawyer with Stein's campaign has said it wants the recount done by hand. That would take longer and require a judge's order, Haas said.

Perhaps the most important deadline is Dec. 19, when electors around the country must meet to cast their Electoral College votes, said Edward Foley, an expert in election law at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.

"That is a hard deadline and if a state were to miss that deadline, it would be technically in jeopardy of not having its electoral votes counted," he said.

If the recount isn't complete by then, electors from Wisconsin could meet anyway and try to have their results sent to Congress by the time it counts the votes on Jan. 6, Foley said. Congress has wide latitude to decide how to count the states' electoral votes.

Political scientist Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it would be extremely difficult to complete the recount on time. About twice as many votes were cast in the presidential election as the 2011 Supreme Court race.

In recounts, typically both candidates gain votes, in part because absentee ballots that weren't counted initially get tallied, he said. Some absentee ballots don't get counted on election day because they were damaged or had extra marks on them.

Closing Clinton's gap of 22,000 votes is unlikely, Burden said.

She would have to win recounts in all three states to win the presidency — an even more remote possibility.

Why wait until the last hour to file for a recount?

Very sleazy.