Marc Elias, Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer, announced on Saturday that the Democratic candidate will join the Green Party”s Jill Stein in a full recount of Wisconsin’s polls, and possibly Michigan and Pennsylvania as well.
Elias stated in an article in Medium that the Democratic candidate’s interest in a recount is solely for the sake of fairness.
“Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.”
He did not anticipate the recount will bring about a change in the results since the margin separating Clinton and president elect Donald Trump in these states “well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount”. Trump leads in Wisconsin by 22,177 votes, in Michigan by 10,704 votes, and in Pennsylvania by 70,638 votes.
“But regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself,” Elias wrote.
President-elect Donald Trump said in a statement: “The people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, ‘We must accept this result and then look to the future.’”
Stein has raised $5 million towards the effort and Trump has labelled her calls for a recount a “scam”.