Photo courtesy of MCT Campus
Five states across the country have been contending with requests for ballot recounts since the day following the national election. Three of the five states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are being supported by the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. Nevada is being backed by independent candidate Roque De La Fuente and Floridian voters are backing the theory that hacking and machine malfunctions caused Trump to win.
Here’s where the states stand today.
Florida
Three voters from central Florida are rallying to overturn the presidential election results for the state of Florida. Their reasoning? Machine malfunctions and hacking.
On Monday, Dec. 5, a lawsuit was filed in Leon Circuit Court where the three told judges Hillary Clinton won Florida, not Donald Trump. The defendants claimed their counties had problems with machine malfunctions, changing their votes to Trump and hackers altering the results.
The three voters are asking the state of Florida for a hand recount of every ballot written with all expenses to be paid by Trump, Governor Rick Scott and all 29 Republican presidential electors from Florida.
Reports from voters all across the state of florida have flooded the desks of attorneys. Some voters said on Election day they were turned away from the polls, being told they had already casted their presidential vote. Besides the reports of local citizens, the Florida Division of Elections only reported minor issues with the voting polls.
Trump received more than 4.6 million votes in the state of Florida, adding up to 112,000 more votes than Hillary Clinton.
Wisconsin
Since the unofficial election results of Nov. 8 came out, Stein has been backing Wisconsin, saying they may have a faulty voting system.
As of Tuesday, Dec. 6, workers were still continuing to recount the nearly three million ballots casted by the Wisconsin voters.
Six counties had finished counting on Monday, Dec. 5, morning, with each candidate losing 20 votes, keeping the vote margin the same between the candidates. Trump beat Hillary by 22,000 votes.
A Trump voter has filed a federal lawsuit against the recount and there will be a hearing today, Nov. 9.
Nevada
Independent presidential candidate Roque De La Fuente paid $14,000 for a partial recount in the state of Nevada to provide a counterbalance for the initiation of Stein’s recounts. De La Fuente finished last in the Nevada election with a fraction of 1 percent of the vote.
92 precincts are being recounted, with 84 of them being in the Las Vegas area and the eight others in four separate counties. If the sample shows a change of at least 1 percent for De La Fuente or Clinton, the Nevada Division of Elections will launch a full recount of every vote casted in Nevada.
Clinton defeated Trump by 27,202 votes out of 1.1 million and the recount should be finished by today, according to secretary of state spokeswoman, Gail Anderson.
Michigan
Eight counties have undergone recount in the state of Michigan. Oakland, Ingham, Wayne, Kalamazoo, Washtenaw, Kent, Ottawa and Macomb counties began their recounts Monday and Tuesday, December 5 and 6, upon the request of Stein. Her campaign brought up the ideas that Michigan’s voting machine could be susceptible to hacking and fraud. 4.8 million casted votes will be recounted.
It’s possible that some counties may not have all their votes counted because of improper seals on ballot boxes and the number of counts not matching the number of actual votes casted. So, in these counties, the original voting results will remain the same.
Trump campaigners and political action committee members are filing separate lawsuits to stop the recount. They are arguing that Stein’s fourth place finish has caused her to feel no resentment towards the results, making her unqualified for the recount.
Trump won Michigan by a fifth of a percentage point, or 10,700 votes, over Clinton.
Pennsylvania
Green party lawyers have been in a standstill since they began their recount on Nov. 8. The lawsuit consisted of a recount and an examination of the aging voting machines used in Pennsylvania to see if they are susceptible to hacking.
It has been said in the lawsuit that the paperless voting process makes Pennsylvania’s results a target for hackers. Lawyers are using the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails as their source of reason.
Election officials have yet to find any traces of hacking or tampering of the votes in any Pennsylvania counties.
As of Monday, Dec. 5, recounted votes have led to Trump’s lead diminishing to 47,750 over Hillary, out of six million votes casted in the state of Pennsylvania. That number is still 0.5 percent away from setting off a mandatory statewide recount. Officials said even with the tremendous changes in some counties, there aren’t enough uncounted votes to change the results.
Students at East, like senior Olivia Favreau, think the recounts are necessary for a change in the results, but they will provide good insight about miscounting and hacking within the election process.
“I think a recount is important in order to reassure trust in our voting system because it is clear that it’s flawed and taking action towards fixing this system like recounts are important,” Favreau said.
Others feel as though Stein’s actions are just a way for her to make more money for her future campaigns.
“This was nothing but a scam to raise money for her next campaign for president,” junior Christopher Patrick said. “The seven to eight million dollars [Stein] has raised is more than twice what she has been able to raise the other two times she has run.
The five states say that the recounted results will not affect the election’s final outcome. Even though the election won’t change, there have been multiple problems and miscounts found with the polls.