Philadelphia launches voluntary recount after finding major vote total discrepancies

| 2:58 pm EST December 2, 2016
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One day after Palmer Report and other news outlets reported that a major change to the official voting totals out of Philadelphia had reduced the size of Donald Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania by more than twenty thousand votes, Philadelphia announced today that it’s launching an immediate and voluntary recount to determine if even more votes had been originally miscounted or excluded. Even as Jill Stein continues her legal battle to try to force the entire state of Pennsylvania to perform a recount, Philadelphia isn’t waiting around to find out whether a recount will be legally required.

Pennsylvania’s original vote totals had Donald Trump winning the state by just over seventy thousand votes. But the sudden revisions out of Philadelphia have now reduced the size of his overall lead to fewer than fifty thousand votes. The Philadelphia recount could shift these totals even further. The wildly shifting numbers in the state also give legal fuel to Jill Stein’a case for a statewide recount, both because the shifts suggest vote counting irregularities, and because the winning margin in the state is now even smaller.

If the vote totals shift in Pennsylvania such that Hillary Clinton ends up with the most votes in the state, either due to the voluntary Philadelphia recount or the still-litigated statewide recount, the state’s electoral votes would automatically be reassigned from Trump to Clinton. This is considered crucial, as if Clinton ends up winning all three recounted states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, she’ll become president-elect instead of Trump. Philadelphia’s local NBC affiliate has more on the voluntary recount.