After Michigan Recount Scuttled, Jill Stein to Get Huge Refund

(UPDATED) After a federal court judge scuttled Jill Stein’s historic recount of Michigan votes in the 2016 presidential election, the state will return a portion of the $973,250 the Green Party candidate paid to re-tally the 4.8 million ballots in 7,786 in-person and absentee precincts.

The recount had been underway for three days and 26 counties had begun counting ballots before it was stopped Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith, who tied his decision to a Michigan Court of Appeals decision that found Stein had no legal standing to request the recount.

Stein’s campaign said the refunded money will be applied to ongoing recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Stein requested the recounts in the three battleground states that swung the election to President-elect Donald Trump after a prominent group of election attorneys and computer scientists, including J. Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan, said they had found “persuasive evidence” that the election results could have been hacked by a state actor.

Though no evidence of hacking was found, some vulnerabilities were discovered in Michigan’s election process. Stein also had raised questions about 75,000 Michigan ballots that showed no vote in the presidential election, higher than any other presidential election in the state’s history.

David Cobb, a spokesman for Stein’s campaign, told the Detroit Free Press the problems that showed up with ballots that couldn’t be recounted are “a national disgrace.”

“We see that in Detroit, half of the votes were ineligible to recount because of antiquated state laws,” Cobb said. “Just as we were gearing up to discover something wrong going on, the court stopped us.”

• See Also: Michigan Recount: 5 Things We Learned About Duct Tape, Uncounted Ballots, Wilson Pickett and Jill Stein

Michigan Secretary of State spokesman Fred Woodhams told the Free Press that Stein will have to pay for the precincts that had been counted. It’s unclear how many precincts had been counted in the 26 counties that had begun, but the total was 1,364 in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Ingham counties at a cost of about $170,500.

Stein’s Michigan attorney, Mark Breer, told the Free Press that it’s fair that the campaign pay for the precincts that were recounted but said Stein should get a refund for those that were deemed unable to be recounted.

However, Stein campaign spokeswoman Margy Levinson said the full amount should be returned.

On Friday, the Michigan Supreme Court said it would not hear Stein's appeal of an Appeals Court decision that said Goldsmith should never have allowed the recount. The high court hasn’t said it will hear the appeal, but two Michigan justices who are on Trump’s short list of possible U.S. Supreme Court nominees have disqualified themselves in the event that the appeal is allowed, The Detroit News reported.

They are Chief Justice Bob Young and Justice Joan Larsen. Brewer had argued in court filings that the pair have “substantial personal and professional interest in the election of Trump as president.”

Trump was declared the winner in Michigan by 10,704 votes on Nov. 28.

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons