Thread: Election Recount to Begin next week

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

EVERYONE INVOLVED IN ANY VOTE FRAUD SHOULD GO TO JAIL.

Who or what they support or oppose is irrelevant.

Then Jerry Brown and the majority of the California Legislature should go to jail. Start rounding them up. I'm all for it. But so far, there is no voter fraud identified in Wisconsin. I'm not saying there isn't any, Milwaukee probably has a ton of it, but none of it will be identified during a recount. A recount is a repeat of the same procedure that counted the votes to begin with. Yes, human errors, mistakes in tallies and so forth by the counters occur with each cycle. There were some found during the canvass which is the way they check for these in the first count, there will be others that occur during the second count and the same canvass procedure that found the first ones will find the second ones.

Wisconsin Presidential Recount to Begin Thursday


Officials say they have seen no problems, but say recount will boost confidence

By SHIBANI MAHTANI
Updated Nov. 28, 2016 12:21 p.m. ET 9 COMMENTS

A full recount of presidential election votes is expected to begin in Wisconsin on Thursday, following a petition by Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Election officials, in a special meeting on Monday, said they had received petitions on Friday from Ms. Stein and Reform Party candidate Roque De La Fuente to hold a recount.

Though state election officials said they are confident in the results and how they were counted, the Wisconsin Elections Commission has no authority to deny or hold up the petition and a recount must be held as long as the candidates pay for it.

“As long as the petition is valid…the commission must issue a recount order,” said Michael Haas, the commission’s interim administrator.


THE TRUMP TRANSITION

Republican Donald Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by more than 27,000 votes in Wisconsin, and Ms. Stein received 30,980 or 1.1% of votes. Because the margin between Mr. Trump and Ms. Stein, the candidate requesting the recount, is greater than 0.25% of total votes cast, Ms. Stein must pay for the recount.

Given the margins, election officials don’t believe the recount will change the results of the presidential election in Wisconsin.

“The outcome is not going to be different,” said Mark Thomsen, the commission’s chairman. “I don’t doubt that the president-elect is going to win that vote.”

Ms. Stein has also vowed to file recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, both of which have deadlines this week. She has raised $6.2 million towards the effort, which includes filing fees and attorney costs.

In Pennsylvania, Ms. Stein faces a significant logistical hurdle of organizing roughly 30,000 voters across the state to file challenges in more than 9,000 individual districts to force a statewide recount. Her campaign could also go to court to ask for a recount. In Michigan, the deadline is Wednesday and state law allows the winning candidate, in this case Mr. Trump, to object.

The payment for the Wisconsin recount must be received in full before election officials can start the recount. Wisconsin clerks will estimate the cost of a recount—expected to be in the millions—and inform both candidates later today.

“Absent of a complete payment tomorrow, there will be no recount,” Mr. Thomsen said.

Under federal law, a recount must be completed by Dec. 13, 35 days from Election Day. The recount will involve looking at all votes in the state, or nearly three million votes. Officials said this will require clerks to work around the clock and overnight. The last time a recount was ordered in Wisconsin, in the 2011 Supreme Court election, it took a month.

Ms. Stein’s effort for a recount has been backed by Mrs. Clinton, whose campaign said it would participate in the process to ensure that it proceeds “in a manner that is fair to all sides.”

“Regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself,” wrote Marc Elias, general counsel for Mrs.

Clinton’s presidential campaign, in a blog post Saturday.

But President-elect Mr. Trump has dismissed charges that his victory was illegitimate, and on Twitter alleged that millions of people voted illegally, without providing any evidence.

Mr. Thomsen said the accusation of illegal votes being counted was “really inappropriate” and “an insult to the people who run our elections.” A recount, he said, will boost confidence in the voting process. It will “give us a very good audit” and “reassure Wisconsin voters,” he added.

Wisconsin election officials said they have seen no evidence of the voting machines being hacked, one of Ms. Stein’s claims when she filed the petition. The machines weren’t connected to the internet, so they couldn’t have been tampered with over the internet; and they had tamper-evident seals, and were under lock and key with only a few authorized election officials able to access them, officials said.

—Byron Tau contributed to this article.
Write to Shibani Mahtani at shibani.mahtani@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications:

Because the margin between Donald Trump and Jill Stein, the candidate requesting the recount, is greater than 0.25% of total votes cast, Ms. Stein must pay for the recount. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated she must pay for the recount because the margin was smaller than 0.25% of total votes cast. (Nov. 28)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/wisconsi...day-1480352509