Stein ends US election recount bid, says it revealed flaws in voting system

Washington: Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate, on Tuesday closed her long-shot bid to recount the votes in three battleground states, saying that the effort encountered bureaucratic hurdles and revealed deep shortcomings in the elections system.

“We do not have a voting system we can trust, and the recount was essentially stopped in its tracks,” Stein said in a conference call with reporters.

Since finishing a distant fourth in the November 8 election, Stein has played a prominent role as she pushed for recounts while saying, without proof, that the vote may have been hacked. Her lawyers doggedly pursued recounts in three states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — where Donald Trump led Hillary Clinton by a combined margin of roughly 75,000 votes.

After repeated legal clashes with Trump and his allies, only Wisconsin conducted a full recount, which added 131 votes to his margin of victory. Several state and federal court rulings ultimately blocked the requests to review the votes in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Trump, who criticised the recount effort despite his own baseless claims that “millions” had voted illegally, took to Twitter to celebrate the results, pointing out that he had gained votes in Wisconsin.

“The Dems and Green Party can now relax,” he said, calling the effort a “scam.”

While the effort had no impact on the outcome of the presidential race, critics said, it highlighted a number of concerns about the election system and recount procedures, including arcane rules, conflicting court opinions and hefty costs.

“The recount has shone a light on that mess and has really lifted up the call for a voting system we can trust,” Stein said.

In Michigan, a recount was underway for three days until it was halted last week after court rulings. But questions over the election there are not over.

Officials from the Michigan secretary of state’s office have announced that they will pursue an audit of the vote in 20 precincts in Detroit after the recount turned up inconsistencies. By some estimates, a third of the city’s precincts were deemed not “recountable” because the number of voters recorded on Election Day did not match the number of ballots stored in containers in case of a recount.

Local officials have said the discrepancy does not suggest that the results were counted improperly, but more likely that poll workers did not remove ballots from tabulator bins to place them in other containers in case of a recount. In one precinct, said Fred Woodhams, of the secretary of state’s office, about 50 ballots were in the container at a precinct where some 300 people had voted.

“We’re bringing the ballots to Lansing today to be audited,” Woodhams said, referring to the state capital. “We need to find an explanation.”

In Pennsylvania, Stein’s lawyers asked a federal judge to order a statewide recount and forensic exam of voting machines. But the judge, Paul S. Ryan, ruled Monday that there were at least six grounds for denying the request. Among them, the judge wrote, was that there was no credible evidence of hacking and that a recount would mean Pennsylvania’s votes would not be certified in time for the state’s electors to meet to cast ballots December 19, as scheduled.

“Such a result would be both outrageous and completely unnecessary; as I have found, suspicion of a ‘hacked’ Pennsylvania election borders on the irrational,” he wrote.

Stein’s lawyers said they would press on with litigation in Pennsylvania to seek reforms.

Stein raised $7.3 million to cover recount costs. An accounting estimate released Tuesday said $7.4 million had been spent. If some money is recouped, she said it would be donated to an election reform organisation.