Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein has received $2.5 million in donations to push for election recounts in three swing states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Stein, who launched her crowd funding campaign on Wednesday morning, hit her requested total inside of 24 hours, securing more than $2 million by midnight ET, and reaching $2.5 million by 3AM ET.
Stein’s proposed recounts have no hope of propelling her or the Green Party into a position of power in the United States; instead, they could assist the Democratic Party, who lost out to the Republicans in the three states in question. If Hillary Clinton were to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in a recount, it would put her ahead of Donald Trump in the Electoral College, scoring 278 votes to his revised 260 — more in line with Clinton’s lead of more than 2 million in the popular vote.
The Green Party, however, says the intention of the recounts is not to help Hillary Clinton, but to serve as “part of an election integrity movement” that attempts to “shine a light on just how untrustworthy the US election system is.” That lack of trust has deepened recently, too, as technology has theoretically made it possible for nefarious forces to quietly tweak voting results.
Elections could be influenced by hackers, malware, and other electronic tampering, and US officials aren’t necessarily trained or equipped to deal with such problems. Alex Halderman, a computer scientist and voting expert, suggested this week that the Clinton campaign file for a recount as a matter of course, even though the unexpected election results were “probably not” the result of a cyber attack.
Each of the states in the crowd funded campaign was reportedly chosen because of “statistical anomalies” observed by independent election integrity experts. In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Stein says “the data suggests a significant need to verify machine-counted vote totals,” prompting Green Party-led filings for recounts. The cost for those filings is reflected in the $2.5 million total, with at least $1.1 million needed for Wisconsin, $500,000 for Pennsylvania, and $600,000 for Michigan.
