News / Politics

Green Party’s Jill Stein raises $4.5 million for presidential vote recounts

Friday, 25 November 2016 11:01 AM [ Last Update: Friday, 25 November 2016 11:13 AM ]

Defeated US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks at a campaign rally in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Reuters)

US Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein has raised over $4 million to force a vote recount in the three battleground states where Donald Trump scored narrow wins in the 2016 presidential election.

Stein’s website said Thursday it has exceeded its initial goal for raising $2.5 million and has reached its target of raising $4.5 million to force recounts in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The deadlines to petition for recounts are approaching in Wisconsin on Friday, Pennsylvania on Monday and Michigan on Wednesday.

"We deserve elections we can trust," Stein’s campaign said, adding that the effort was not intended to help defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Stein’s push for recounts comes as a growing number of academics and computer scientists, as well as election lawyers, believe foreign hackers could have modified vote totals.

The experts say that analysis of electronic voting machines in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania suggests that results may have been manipulated or hacked in some counties.

In Wisconsin for example, the analysts say Trump claimed disproportionate wins in counties that used electronic voting compared with those that used only paper ballots.

The efforts have been fueled to some extent by the allegations before the election that Russia was looking for ways to manipulate the results in favor of Trump.

Clinton lost the election despite a clear plurality of perhaps two million votes more than Trump in the popular vote.

Having led Trump in opinion polls in the run-up to the election in all three battleground states, Clinton narrowly lost Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to his Republican rival, and may end up losing Michigan, where a final result has not yet been declared.

There have been large demonstrations across the US protesting the billionaire businessman's upset victory. Millions of people have also signed petitions calling on federal authorities to eliminate the Electoral College system.

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