Election 2016 recount: Where 5 states stand

Detroit Free Press Staff and News Services
9:15 a.m. EST December 7, 2016


(Photo: Paul Sancya, AP)

Michigan update: A federal court could decide Wednesday whether the Michigan recount is to continue after a state court ruled the recount should have never been allowed to begin. See the latest on the state court ruling here, and the latest on a federal court decision here.

Five states are contending with requests for recounts of ballots cast in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is behind recount efforts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, states where Republican Donald Trump won narrowly over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In Nevada, a partial recount of the race was requested by independent presidential candidate Roque De La Fuente. Clinton won in that state.

And a motion was filed Tuesday in central Florida by three voters who say that the election in Florida, which went to Trump, was marred because of hacking, malfunctioning voting machines and other problems.

Here's where each state stands Tuesday.

Wisconsin

Workers sort absentee ballots as part of the Wisconsin recount Thursday at the Iowa County Courthouse in Dodgeville. Thursday was the first day of recounting ballots from the presidential election. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein raised to pay the $3.5 million for the massive recount. (Photo: Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)


Workers continued Tuesday to recount nearly 3 million presidential ballots in the nation's first statewide presidential recount since 2004, which began Thursday.

The recount has resulted in little change so far in the unofficial results as reported Nov. 8.

Six counties had completed their work by Monday morning, with the margin between Trump and Clinton unchanged. Both candidates lost 20 votes.

A federal lawsuit was filed late last week by a Trump voter and two super PACs seeking to stop the recount. The judge rejected a request to halt the recount while the lawsuit is pending and scheduled a hearing for Friday.

Trump won Wisconsin by about 22,000 votes over Clinton.

Michigan

Buy PhotoElections Director for Wayne County Delphine Oden, left, officially gets the recount started as she assists counters at one table during the Wayne County portion of the recount process for the presidential election Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, at Cobo Hall in Detroit. (Photo: Regina H. Boone, Detroit Free Press)


More counties joined Oakland and Ingham counties Tuesday after legal wrangling over Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein's request for a hand recount of nearly 4.8 million Michigan ballots cast for president delayed the start.

Stein's campaign raised questions about the accuracy of the voting apparatus in Michigan, suggesting it could be susceptible to hacking, error or fraud.

Shortly after midnight Monday — after a rare Sunday hearing in federal court — U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith ordered the recount to begin, dismissing claims from attorneys for Trump and the Michigan Republican Party that the recount was a waste of time and money with virtually no chance of changing the outcome of the election.

Late Tuesday, his decision to start an immediate recount was upheld by a 3-judge panel with the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. But moments later, the Michigan Court of Appeals issued a 3-0 opinion saying the recount never should have started because the person requesting it — Stein — had no chance of winning with her 1% of the total vote, and was therefore not a qualified aggrieved party under state law.

President-elect Donald Trump and the Michigan Republican Party have argued that point all along — that Stein has no standing to request a recount. Recount opponents also have argued that the recount is unfairly costing Michigan taxpayers “nearly $1 million per day,” and that this is an issue for the state courts to decide, not federal courts.

Goldsmith will rehear arguments from both sides today. In issuing an immediate recount, Goldsmith concluded that Stein and Michigan voters would have suffered "irreparable harm" if the recount was not started quickly enough to get it completed before a Dec. 13 federal deadline to guarantee Michigan's 16 electoral votes are counted.

Meanwhile, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers is scheduled to meet in Lansing at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. Last Friday, the board deadlocked 2-2 on Trump's objection to Stein's request for a recount, which allowed the hand recount to move forward. But the Michigan Court of Appeals now says the board erred in its decision.

Trump won the state by about 10,700 votes, or two-tenths of a percentage point, over Clinton. Stein finished a distant fourth with just over 51,000 votes.

Kalamazoo, Kent, Macomb, Ottawa, Washtenaw and Wayne counties began their recounts Tuesday morning, after Oakland and Ingham began Monday. Wayne's recount is, by far, the largest with 1,680 precincts to be counted. Other counties will begin their recounts over the next week, with the last batch of counties in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula starting Dec. 12.

A spokesman for Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said it's possible not all votes will be recounted in Wayne — and some other counties — because of improper seals on ballot boxes and other issues, such as poll book counts not matching the number of actual ballots cast on vote scanner machines. In such cases, the original vote would stand. Clinton won 67% of Wayne County's vote.

In a related matter Tuesday, a Republican-controlled committee in the state House approved legislation that would require statewide candidates who lose by more than 5 percentage points to pay 100% of the estimated recount cost.

Those candidates now pay $125 per precinct, which in Stein's case is nearly $1 million. However, Johnson has said the recount may cost $5 million. The bill would retroactively apply to Stein, though Democrats — and at least one Republican — questioned the constitutionality of changing the rules "in the middle of the game."

Pennsylvania

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein (Photo: Associated Press)


Green Party-backed lawyers were in a holding pattern Tuesday after asking a federal judge Monday to order a recount of the state’s Nov. 8 presidential election result.

A federal lawsuit filed in Philadelphia called for a recount and a forensic examination of the aging electronic voting machines used in most Pennsylvania counties, saying both are necessary to determine whether the election results were manipulated by hackers.

The lawsuit said Pennsylvania’s paperless voting machines make it a prime target for hacking, citing the election-season e-mail hacking of the Democratic National Committee and attempts to breach election systems in other states.

“The Pennsylvania election system is a national disgrace. Voters are forced to use vulnerable, hackable, antiquated technology banned in other states, then rely on the kindness of machines. There is no paper trail. Voting machines are electoral black sites: no one permits voters or candidates to examine them,” the suit said.

Pennsylvania elections officials have said there is no evidence that hackers tried to manipulate the vote.
“The current machines worked perfect on November 8th,” Lehigh County elections chief Tim Benyo emailed Monday. “No issues out of the ordinary.”

An updated count Monday by state election officials showed Trump's lead shrinking to 47,750 over Clinton, out of 6 million votes cast, as more counties finished counting overseas ballots and settled provisional ballot challenges. That is still shy of Pennsylvania's 0.5 percent trigger for an automatic statewide recount. Final counts are outstanding in some counties, but there are not enough uncounted votes to change the outcome, officials say.

Nevada

A Clark County election employee works on a recount of presidential election ballots Monday, Dec. 5, 2016, in North Las Vegas. (Photo: John Locher/AP)


A partial recount continued Tuesday in Nevada at the request of independent presidential candidate Roque De La Fuente, who finished last with a fraction of 1% of the vote. He paid about $14,000 for the recount to provide what he called a counterbalance to the recounts sought by Stein.

Most of the 92 precincts being re-counted are in the Las Vegas area, with eight of the precincts in four other counties.

If the sample shows a discrepancy of at least 1% for De La Fuente or Clinton, a full recount will be launched in all 17 Nevada counties.

Clinton defeated Trump in Nevada by 27,202 votes, out of 1.1 million votes cast. Nevada Secretary of State spokeswoman Gail Anderson said the recount will be finished by the end of this week.

Florida

Johanna Stiles, center, and Dana McBride, right, prepare to open one of several stacks of vote-by-mail ballots to present to the Leon County, Florida Canvassing Board on Nov. 8, 2016 in Tallahassee, Fla. (Photo: Mark Wallheiser, Getty Images)


Three central Florida voters are mounting an unlikely bid to overturn the presidential election result in the Sunshine State.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in Leon Circuit Court, they assert that Clinton, not Trump, actually won Florida. The plaintiffs, who live in Osceola and Volusia counties, say the state’s official election results were off because of hacking, malfunctioning voting machines and other problems.

They're asking for a hand recount of every paper ballot in Florida, at the expense of defendants including Trump, Gov. Rick Scott and the 29 Republican presidential electors from Florida.

Clint Curtis, an Orlando attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the defendants may not respond by the time the Electoral College meets on Dec. 19.

He said he has received a “deluge” of reports from voters across the state of problems on election day, including people being turned away at the polls and told they’d already voted.

Florida Division of Elections officials reported only a few "minor issues" on election day.

Curtis said he hopes Trump, who has blasted recount efforts elsewhere, will get behind one in Florida. Officially, Trump got more than 4.6 million votes in Florida, beating Clinton by more than 112,000 votes.

“He’s mentioned he wants to fix the rigged system,” he said. “This will give the opportunity to do that. If it were a normal politician, I’d say our chances are very slim. But it’s not a normal politician — it’s Donald Trump.”

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