2016 United States Presidential Election Recount

Overview

The 2016 United States Presidential Election Recount is an ongoing petition for an audit of 2016 United States Presidential Election results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, three key swing states where President-elect Donald Trump won over Hillary Clinton by a slim margin of votes, spearheaded by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. Online, the news of the recount efforts immediately sparked discussions about what could happen if it resulted in the revocation of Trump's electoral victory in all three states.

Background

After Republican Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 United States Presidential Election, a team of computer scientists noticed a statistical anomaly in key swing states Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and began lobbying the Hillary Clinton campaign to request an independent review of the results in those states.^[1] The team found that in counties that relied on electronic voting machines in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes than in counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. On November 25th, Jill Stein filed for a recount in Wisconsin, and pledged she would do the same in Pennsylvania and Michigan, using over 6 million dollars in donations.^[2] Stein claimed to do this to ensure the machines had not been hacked, especially after it was suspected that the Russian Government had hacked the Democratic National Committee. ^[3]

Developments

There is no concrete evidence that hackers influenced the election. The only evidence--the electric machine statistical anomalies, the disparity between exit polls and results-- is circumstantial. The Obama administration has stood by the results of the election, saying “The federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on election day. We believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.”

Clinton Response

On November 26th, Clinton lawyer Mark Erik Elias published a post on Medium^[4] that announced that though the Clinton campaign had not planned to request a recount themselves due to no internal findings of hacking or vote manipulation, since Stein filed for the recount in Wisconsin and would likely in Michigan and Pennsylvania, they intended "to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides." Elias noted that they would participate in the recount "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."

Trump Response

The same day, Trump called the recount effort a "scam," tweeting, "The Green Party scam to fill up their coffers by asking for impossible recounts is now being joined by the badly defeated & demoralized Dems."^[5] He noted that Clinton had already conceded and the recount would change nothing. The following day, Trump caused controversy when he tweeted a claim that he would have won the popular vote--which Clinton won by 2 million votes--had it not been for "millions voting illegally."^[6] There is no evidence that millions voted illegally.

Search Interest

External References