Hillary Clinton Campaign Involved in Wisconsin Recount, Campaign Attorney Says
Hillary Clinton‘s campaign is participating in the Wisconsin recount, Clinton’s general counsel shared in a post on Medium.
“It should go without saying that we take these concerns extremely seriously,” Marc Elias wrote. “We certainly understand the heartbreak felt by so many who worked so hard to elect Hillary Clinton, and it is a fundamental principle of our democracy to ensure that every vote is properly counted.”
Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein filed a recount for Wisconsin on Friday and has raised more than $5 million to pay for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Green Party’s initial goal was to raise $2 million, but as of Friday, that goal was raised to $7 million, according to CNN.
President-elect Donald Trump had victories in Pennsylvania and Michigan, which were states he need to win the presidency.
Elias was quick to note that Clinton’s campaign has not noted any signs of vote tampering in those states but after Wisconsin announced it would begin a recount the campaign felt compelled to offer support.
“Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,” he wrote.
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Elias proceeded to list five main objectives and actions implemented by the campaign, including conducting meetings and monitoring and staffing post-election canvasses. But he maintains that the voters are the most important part of the campaign’s participation in this recount.
“The campaign is grateful to all those who have expended time and effort to investigate various claims of abnormalities and irregularities,” he wrote. “While that effort has not, in our view, resulted in evidence of manipulation of results, now that a recount is underway, we believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported.”
Stein told CNN‘s John Berman on Thursday that “there were attempts made broadly on state voter databases and we know that we have an election system that relies a computer system that is wide to open hacks.”
“It’s extremely vulnerable,” she continued. “Americans deserve to have confidence in our vote.”
Wisconsin is working under a federal deadline of Dec. 13 to complete the recount. As a result,Wisconsin Elections Commission’s Administrator Michael Haas said county employees may need to work evenings and weekends to meet deadlines.
