OT: Election results in doubt? This "Green" effort could make us all blue...
Jill Stein Says Her Campaign Raised Funds for Recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania
By Byron Tau
WASHINGTON -- Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein said that her campaign has raised enough money to file requests for vote recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, after a prominent computer scientist called for paper ballots to be examined to prove the results hadn't been manipulated by hackers.
In an online fundraising surge over the Thanksgiving holiday, Ms. Stein's campaign raised $4.7 million toward the recounts as of Friday morning, according to a fundraising website set up by the campaign.
In addition to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the Stein campaign is raising money for a recount in Michigan and appears on track to hit that goal. Those three states provided Republican Donald Trump with his margin of victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton and together represent enough Electoral College votes to tip the results of the election.
"After a divisive and painful presidential race, in which foreign agents hacked into party databases, private email servers, and voter databases in certain states, many Americans are wondering if our election results are reliable," Ms. Stein said in a statement on her website.
"That's why the unexpected results of the election and reported anomalies need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified. We deserve elections we can trust."
The recount effort follows concerns this election season about the integrity of the vote. Mr. Trump routinely said before Election Day that the outcome would be rigged. Mrs. Clinton's supporters pointed to efforts linked to Russia to hack and release embarrassing information about her campaign. Election officials and cybersecurity experts worried about the safety and security of voting infrastructure.
The push for a recount has been driven in part by J. Alex Halderman, a prominent computer scientist and expert in election security and one of a group of computer scientists and election law experts who urged Clinton campaign officials last week to press for a recount of ballots in those three states.
In a blog post explaining the need for a recount, Mr. Halderman outlined a theoretical way that electronic voting systems, even if they are not connected to the internet, could have been hacked. He acknowledged that there is no evidence that such a hack occurred.
"The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence -- paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts," Mr. Halderman wrote Wednesday.
The Stein campaign has laid out a budget of between $6 million and $7 million to pay for recounts across the three states. The campaign says it needs $1.1 million to file the request for a recount in Wisconsin, $500,000 to file in Pennsylvania and $600,000 in Michigan. They also estimate $2 million to $3 million in attorneys fees, and additional funds for recount observers.
Neither Mrs. Clinton nor her campaign has made any statement about the Stein campaign effort to recount ballots in the three states that proved decisive for her loss.
Ms. Stein's campaign hadn't yet filed the paperwork for a Wisconsin recount as of Friday morning. She has until 5 p.m. on Friday to request a recount, while deadlines in Pennsylvania and Michigan are next week.
Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
----Albert Einstein
