Wisconsin became the first battleground state on Friday to officially receive a request for a recount of presidential votes from members of the Green Party, which raised several million dollars this week to cover the costs associated with recounts in at least three states.
2016 Green Party nominee Jill Stein and others are seeking recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, citing reports of discrepancies in counties where President-elect Trump earned far more votes than expected and possible hackings of electronic voting machines.
Stein’s official petition to the Wisconsin Election Commission on Friday stated that the petitioner “believes that an irregularity has occurred affecting all wards in Wisconsin in the counting and return of votes cast for the office of President.” The petition cited the hacking of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails as evidence that the Wisconsin votes may have been tampered with.
“In the age of hacking, I see this as nothing more than an audit of our election and voting system here in Wisconsin,” an unidentified Green Party official said Friday afternoon at a press conference in Wisconsin. He added, “I also want to make it perfectly clear [that] this is no way in support of Hillary Clinton.
“In this day and age, when President-elect Trump says ‘the system is rigged,’ I would think that he would be the first one to want to have the audit take place all across the country,” the same official said.
Wisconsin Green Party member George Martin said one concern that led party officials to request a recount stemmed from major differences between statewide exit polls and the actual election results in the Badger State.
“The exit polls indicated that [Trump] should have had 44.3 percent” of the vote,” Martin said, noting that Trump instead received about 48 percent.
Stein had raised more than $4 million for vote recounts by Friday morning. It is unclear whether she or local officials will file for recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and when such requests could be submitted.
