Hillary Clinton Campaign Will Participate in Wisconsin Recount

The Hillary Clinton campaign said it will participate in the recount initiated by Green Party candidate Jill Stein in Wisconsin even though the campaign says it has not uncovered any "actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology." The Clinton campaign said it intends to participate to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.

In a Medium post published Saturday, Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign's counsel, wrote that the campaign did not plan to exercise the recount option since it had not discovered any evidence of hacking.

Elias wrote that the campaign had received hundreds of messages, emails and calls urging it to investigate hacking concerns in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He outlined the steps the campaign had taken to address the concerns, including having lawyers and analysts comb over the results to spot any anomalies and hold meetings and calls with various outside experts to hear their concerns and review their data findings.

"Most of those discussions have remained private, while at least one has unfortunately been the subject of leaks," Elias wrote.

New York Magazine's Gabriel Sherman first reported that a group of prominent computer scientists and lawyers were urging Clinton to push for a recount in three swing states. A source told New York that in a conference call with Elias and campaign chairman John Podesta, the activists presented findings that showed Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in Wisconsin counties that relied on electronic-voting machines when compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. The group said it had found no evidence of hacking but urged for an independent review considering the fact that the Obama administration formally blamed the Russian government of hacking various Democratic National Committee emails.

The Clinton campaign remained largely quiet after the news became public. However, Stein announced that she would be raising money to fund a recount in the three states. Doubts remained over whether Stein would follow through on the pledge, but just before the deadline on Friday, the Wisconsin Election Commission said it had received recount petitions from Stein and Roque "Rocky" De La Fuente, an unsuccessful candidate for the Reform Party and the American Delta Party. The recount will begin once either Stein of De La Fuente pay the fee for the process to begin, which election officials are still in the process of determining.

To comply with federal law, the recount will have to be completed by Dec. 13.

To file for a recount in Michigan, Stein has to wait for a Monday meeting of the state’s Board of Canvassers to certify the results, the New York Times reports. In Pennsylvania, the deadline to petition for a recount has passed, but a candidate can challenge the result in court before a Monday deadline. Elias wrote that the campaign would take the same approach were Stein to pursue recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

"We do so fully aware that the number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states — Michigan — well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount," Elias wrote. "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."

In addition to meeting with experts, Elias wrote that the campaign has attempted to systematically catalog and investigate every theory presented to it, within its ability. The campaign has been examining laws and practices regarding recounts, contests and audits and has staffed post-election canvasses.

President-elect Donald Trump issued the following statement on the recount effort, calling it a scam.

"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.'

"It is important to point out that with the help of millions of voters across the country, we won 306 electoral votes on Election Day - the most of any Republican since 1988 – and we carried nine of 13 battleground states, 30 of 50 states, and more than 2,600 counties nationwide - the most since President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

"This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn’t even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount. All three states were won by large numbers of voters, especially Pennsylvania, which was won by more than 70,000 votes.

"This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing."

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has said the results of the election "accurately reflect the will of the American people." The administration said the Kremlin probably expected that the publicity after the U.S. accused Russia of hacking the emails, "from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations," would raise questions about the integrity of the election process.

In his post, Elias said that the election cycle was unique in the degree of foreign interference witnessed throughout the campaign.

"The U.S. government concluded that Russian state actors were behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the personal email accounts of Hillary for America campaign officials, and just yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the Russian government was behind much of the 'fake news' propaganda that circulated online in the closing weeks of the election," Elias wrote.

While the impact of how fake news influenced the U.S. election has been widely debated, the Post's report has been criticized because the paper has not verified the credentials of a group cited in the report called PropOrNot, which identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season. Both The Intercept and Fortune ran scathing critiques of the Washington Post article. Another report published by The Intercept identifies that some of the biggest fake news providers were run by political operatives within Trump's circle of advisers and consultants.

Elias wrote that the campaign was grateful to those who had expended their time and effort to investigate claims of abnormalities and irregularities.

"While that effort has not, in our view, resulted in evidence of manipulation of results, now that a recount is underway, we believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported," he wrote.

Patch will update this report.

Image credit: Alexander Nguyen/Patch