Failed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on Wednesday announced plans to force a recount of votes in three crucial swing states — a longshot move that could help vanquished Democrat Hillary Clinton, who remained mum on the subject.
Stein, who garnered a dismal 1 percent of the national vote, said challenging the tallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan was needed to answer questions about a possible cyber-attack on electronic-voting machines.
She appealed for $2 million-plus in donations to pay for the effort, which would have to be started by Friday, the deadline for filing papers in Wisconsin.
An online counter showed just over $285,000 in donations by late Wednesday afternoon, and a Stein campaign lawyer notified the Wisconsin Elections Commission it intended to seek a statewide recount, a commission spokesman said.
There are also deadlines of Monday in Pennsylvania and next Wednesday in Michigan.
All three states voted for President Obama in 2012, but President-elect Donald Trump turned Pennsylvania and Wisconsin red, and holds a narrow, 10,704-vote lead over Clinton in Michigan, according to results announced Wednesday afternoon.
Last week, activists reportedly urged Clinton’s campaign to force recounts in all three states, citing data showing she got 7 percent fewer votes in Wisconsin counties that used electronic-voting machines compared to those that relied on paper ballots and optical scanners.
If computer hacking or other tampering caused that anomaly, Clinton may have been cheated out of as many as 30,000 votes in a state she lost by just over 27,000, according to New York magazine.
In a subsequent article posted Wednesday morning on medium.com, computer-security expert Alex Halderman — reportedly among those who lobbied Clinton’s campaign — wrote that “the most likely explanation” for Trump’s surprise victory was “that the polls were systematically wrong.”
But Halderman, a University of Michigan professor, also said it was possible a “foreign government” like Russia might be involved.
Clinton’s campaign declined to comment.
Additional reporting by Daniel Halper