If Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein can phim sez an doraise around $2 million by Friday afternoon, the United States may have a vote recount on its hands.
Stein's campaign announced Wednesday via its website that they're trying to raise enough money to contest and recount the presidential election results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all of which show thin margins between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Trump has been declared the winner in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, while Michigan remains too close to call.
SEE ALSO: How the tech world's immaturity handed Trump the election"After seeing compelling evidence of voting anomalies, the Stein/Baraka Green Party Campaign is launching an effort to ensure the integrity of our elections," the campaign wrote, on a website funding page. "With your help, we are raising money to demand recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan,and Pennsylvania—three states where the data suggests significant discrepancies in vote totals."
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While Stein's campaign might have access to information about possible voting discrepancies than the general public doesn't, it's not hard to imagine the move was spurned by the furor caused by an article published by New York Magazineon Tuesday, which stated that voting rights experts and cybersecurity experts had both been in touch with the Clinton campaign about possibly challenging the results in those states.
In Wisconsin, the experts said, Clinton received significantly fewer votes in areas where voters cast their ballots via hackable machines (as opposed to marking their preferences on paper). The argument for an audit in Pennsylvania and Michigan was unclear.
At face-value, the argument has an alarming ring to it: The U.S. government has accused Russia of overtly tampering with the presidential election process, first by hacking Democratic Party institutions and officials, and then, by leaking that hacked information to the public. Plus, voting machines are commonly known to have less-than-ideal security.
But polling gurus Nate Silver of 538and Nate Cohn of The New York Timeswere far less convinced by the argument put forth by these experts. Both tweeted that the discrepancies in Wisconsin were explained away when the data was controlled for the voting population in areas that used paper ballots as opposed to machines. In other words: Voters were more likely to cast ballots for Clinton in urban areas, where paper ballots are more common. In more rural areas, where voting machines are more common, they were more likely to vote for Trump.
Run a regression on Wisc. counties with >=50K people, and you find that Clinton improved more in counties with only paper ballots. HOWEVER: pic.twitter.com/4swuU70NaY
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016
...the effect COMPLETELY DISAPPEARS once you control for race and education levels, the key factors in predicting vote shifts this year. pic.twitter.com/NYOINx9lEz
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016
Nothing in Pennsylvania, either, whether or not you control for demographics. pic.twitter.com/25moBhv3Zm
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016
And Michigan has paper ballots everywhere, so not even sure what claim is being made there. pic.twitter.com/4YKrZEhTJl
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016
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Still, Stein may well get an audit rolling if she's able to rake in the money. She'll need to do so by Friday, the last day in which votes in Wisconsin can be contested. Pennsylvania's final day is on Monday, and Michigan's final day is Nov. 30. The campaign hasn't yet responded to questions about what happens to the money if they fall short of their goal. The "terms of service" for the company that processes these donations says only that the processing company has "no control or liability for the acts or omissions of the recipients of your contributions."
As of 5:15 p.m. ET, the campaign has hit nearly $300,000 of their $2.5 million goal. To watch the race to $2.5 million, tune in here.
UPDATE: Nov. 24, 2016, 10:21 a.m. EST As of Thursday morning, Stein has raised just over $3 million toward the recount. The amount of money she asked for has changed since the first fundraising call.
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