Jill Stein Files for Recount in Wisconsin Amid Fears of Election Hack

Updated. The Wisconsin Elections Commission said in a tweet Friday that Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has filed a petition for a recount of the state's votes after a respected Michigan election security expert and others said that though unlikely, the only way to know if the election was hacked in three key swing states was to recount the ballots.

Petitions were filed by both Stein's campaign and that of “Rocky” Roque De La Fuente, the independent candidate for president for both the Reform Party and the American Delta Party. De La Fuente was on the ballot in 20 states and eligible for write-on in 17 other states.

It's unclear when the recount will begin. The recount petitions were filed hours before the deadline to do so in Wisconsin passed at 5 p.m. Friday.

Stein said in a tweet that the recount will begin next week and that volunteers are needed to assist.

More about the process on Wisconsin Patch.

Earlier on Patch: The well-respected University of Michigan election security expert who set off a firestorm with a hypothesis that the 2016 presidential election could have been hacked in three swing states has cleared some of the smoke, writing in a blog that the election was “probably not” hacked, but the only way to know for sure is to immediately audit the results.

J. Alex Halderman also said in the Wednesday blog post that a New York Magazine report that he and election lawyers were pressuring Hillary Clinton to contest results in the three states incorrectly characterized what had taken place. He wrote that he wanted to “set the record straight about what I and other leading election security experts have actually been saying to the campaign and everyone else who’s willing to listen.”

Democrat Hillary Clinton had been expected to win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where president-elect Donald J. Trump’s victory was razor thin. Political analysts and pundits have rejected any suggestion that the election was hacked, arguing that Clinton lost because she got fewer votes where it counted and noting that even if the election had been hacked, a recount might not reveal it, they've said.

But given the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of deploying its hackers to meddle with and manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election with ongoing cyberattacks and Trump's own election-rigging claims during the campaign, the improbable likelihood that a recount could change the results is giving a measure of hope among some left-leaning activists.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein said Wednesday she would contest the results recount in an “effort to check the accuracy of the machine-counted vote tallies,” taking the pressure off Clinton, whose camp has been silent on the recall efforts.

You should read Halderman's entire blog post, which sets out how a hacking could have happened and election cybersecurity in general, but basically, the gist is this:

“Were this year’s deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked. But I don’t believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other. The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts.”

Later in the post, he wrote:

“There’s just one problem, and it might come as a surprise even to many security experts: no state is planning to actually check the paper in a way that would reliably detect that the computer-based outcome was wrong. About half the states have no laws that require a manual examination of paper ballots, and most other states perform only superficial spot checks. If nobody looks at the paper, it might as well not be there. A clever attacker would exploit this.”

Deadlines to contest elections are looming: It’s Friday in Wisconsin, Monday in Pennsylvania and Wednesday in Michigan.

Stein has raised more than $4.7 million of a $7 million fundraising campaign to request recounts in the three states. The amount raised is enough to pay for recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and fundraising is continuing to cover a Michigan recount. The money — more than Stein raised during her entire presidential campaign — was raised in just two days.

“Raising money to pay for the first two recounts so quickly is a miraculous feat and a tribute to the power of grassroots organizing,” Stein’s website says. “In true grassroots fashion, we’re turning to you, the people, and not big-money corporate donors to make this happen.”

A recount would only cost $790,000 in Michigan, which still hasn't officially been called. It would cost about $125 on each of Michigan's 6,300 precincts across the state, Secretary of State spokesman Fred Woodhams told The Detroit News Friday. No official request for a recount has been received.

Wisconsin election officials said they haven't received a recount petition, but will issue a press release if that happens by the deadline.

The Associated Press said Wisconsin Green Party officials said they planned to make the 5 p.m. Friday deadline. Under the state law, recount petitions must show a reason for the recount and cover the costs.

This isn't the first time the Green Party has asked for a recount, The Washington Post reported. In 2004, the Green Party and Libertarian Party teamed to pay for a request for a recount in Ohio that stemmed from voter-repression fears.

David Cobb and Michael Badnarik, the Green and Libertarian candidates, said the request was “due to widespread reports of irregularities in the Ohio voting process” and that they were “compelled to demand a recount of the Ohio presidential vote.”

Democrat John F. Kerry gained feewer than 300 votes on George W. Bush, and made no difference in the allocation of Ohio's electoral votes.

Earlier, Patch reported: Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein said Wednesday she will ask for a recount of votes in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — three states that swung the 2016 presidential election to Donald J. Trump by razor-thin margins — after a group of respected computer scientists and election lawyers said they have "persuasive evidence" that election results may have been hacked, potentially denying Democrat Hillary Clinton of tens of thousands of votes.

Stein received a negligible smattering of votes in the three states but said in a statement that she will file for a recount in an “effort to check the accuracy of the machine-counted vote tallies.”

"The use of systems that have been demonstrated to be easily hacked should concern every American," the statement said.

Stein's request for a recount takes pressure off Clinton to jump back into the political fray, a gambit that could backfire and further divide Americans after a particularly invective-filled election. Political analysts and experts are skeptical that the elections were hacked, despite widespread speculation in recent months of a Russian cyberattack to meddle with U.S. election results.

Our original story: New York Magazine reported Tuesday that the group of computer scientists and lawyers, including Holderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, and voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz, hasn’t spoken publicly about its findings. But the magazine's leaked reports suggest they're leaning hard on Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and general counselor Marc Elias to make the case for a recount.

Together, the three swing states control 46 electoral votes that could swing the election back to Clinton, who was favored to win in pre-election polls. Requests for recounts must be filed by Friday in Wisconsin, Monday in Pennsylvania and Wednesday, Nov. 30, in Michigan.

If Halderman, Bonifaz and their group are right, more history would be made in an already history-making election. The former secretary of state would become the nation’s first woman president, and Trump wouldn’t make history as the first person in modern times to win the presidency without having served in elected or public office or in the military. He would also become the first candidate to win the first tally of electoral votes only to have the victory reversed in a recount.

According to the New York Magazine source, the computer scientists and attorneys cited as evidence supporting a recount: In Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that used electronic-voting machines when compared with those that used optical scanners and paper ballots. According to their analysis, Clinton could have been shorted about 30,000 votes, enough to turn the state blue.

Currently, Clinton is more than 2 million votes ahead of Trump in the popular vote but trails Trump, 232 to 306, in all-important electoral votes. If Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), Michigan (16 electoral votes) and Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) flipped in a recount, Clinton would win in the electoral count, 278-260.

Michigan’s votes were still outstanding until Tuesday, when counties submitted their final results. Trump was still the winner but by a less than 1 percent margin of 9,528 votes. According to the Cook Political Report, a Washington-based newsletter, Trump won by slightly more than 1 percent in Wisconsin (27,190 vote difference) and Pennsylvania (68,965 vote difference).

Russian Hacking Allegations

In a normal year, the differences might not merit an independent review, but this has been far from a normal election cycle. The Obama White House has accused the Russian government of deploying its hackers to meddle with and manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election with ongoing cyberattacks that roiled the Democratic National Committee and cast suspicion on the integrity of the electoral process.

“We cannot sit on the sidelines as a party and let allegations against a foreign government interfering in our election process go unanswered because it may have been beneficial to our cause,” Graham said.

The evidence for a recount is circumstantial, and there’s nothing that suggests the results were hacked. And there are plenty of skeptics.

Among them is Michigan's director of elections, who said it's not possible to hack Michigan voting machines because they're not connected to the internet.

“We are an entire paper and optical scan state,” Chris Thomas, director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections, told the Detroit Free Press Wednesday. “Nothing is connected to the Internet."

Data analysts Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight and Nate Cohn of The New York Times immediately rejected the notion the results had been hacked. And election officials spent weeks reassuring voters how difficult it is to manipulate election results in response to Trump's blistering “rigged election” claims — which, incidentally, disappeared almost entirely when pre-election polls swung in his favor.

Washington Post political writer Philip Bump wrote Wednesday after the New York story began circulating that “a small margin in unlikely places is precisely the sort of thing that raises eyebrows, and these small margins did,” especially when coupled with suggestions of Russian involvement. But, he questioned, why would hackers target a state where pre-election polls showed Clinton up by 6 points, as she was in Wisconsin?

Clinton lost, Bump concluded, “because she got fewer votes where it counted.”

“That was a surprise, and surprises can be awfully hard to accept.”

What’s Not at Issue is Halderman’s Credibility

But no one seems to be doubting Hadlerman's credibility. He's widely respected and has famously demonstrated flaws in voting technologies before, including both domestically in Washington, D.C., and abroad in Estonia and Australia, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal News.

It took Halderman and a team of his students less than 24 hours to hack into the pilot internet voting system in the nation’s capital and alter votes and spy on voters.

“Halderman is very credible, and if he says there are anomalies that deserve investigation, they should be investigated,” Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine, wrote on his Election Law Blog.

Ballot hacking is a complicated issue, Halderman told the Center for Investigative Reporting.

“This is more complicated than attacking an online voting system that is directly connected to the internet,” he said. “But it’s within the capabilities of nation-state attackers, and it would not require a large conspiracy.”

Voting machines don't even need to be hooked up to the internet to be hacked, Halderman explained.
“...Their software can potentially be attacked through a stuxnet-style attack that spreads via the memory cards that are used to load the ballot design,” he said.

Although it’s unclear whether Clinton will ask for a recall, some of her allies are suggesting it on social media. Heba Abedin, sister to top Clinton adviser Huma Abedin, encouraged her Facebook followers to lobby the Department of Justice to take a second look at the Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania results.

“A shift of just 55,000 Trump votes to Hillary in PA, MI & WI is all that is Needed to Win,” she wrote.

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons