Wisconsin head of elections says state is preparing for recount
If you’ve spent the past twenty-four hours rooting for Jill Stein’s recount effort in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, you’ve got plenty of good news to chew on today. Although Stein is leading the recount charge in order to make a point about faulty voting systems, the rather obvious (if coincidental) beneficiary is Hillary Clinton – as those are the three states where she narrowly lost under suspicious circumstances. And that recount effort is already going better than would have been predicted.
For starters, Jill Stein has now raised enough money to cover the recount filing fees in all three states ahead of the respective filing deadlines in each states (yes, the complaining candidate has to pay for the recount). In fact she’s gone well beyond the two-plus million that she estimated she would for the filing fees, and she’s already well into securing enough money to cover the attorney fees and observer costs, which she was going to need to come up with eventually. In fact the tally is now approaching $4 million just one day after the effort was underway. But there’s more important good news.
Under the expectation that Stein would hit her goal by the deadline, Wisconsin’s Elections Commission director Michael Haas is already saying that he’s preparing his state for a recount. Even as the donations to the Stein effort continue to pour in and it becomes even more clear that these recounts will happen, it’s likely that state representatives from Michigan and Pennsylvania will announce the same. Meanwhile in Florida, where state law prohibits a candidate from requesting a recount, a petition demanding that the Florida Secretary of State hold a recount has gained thousands of signatures.
