Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s efforts to recount votes in Pennsylvania would bring significantly more challenges than in the other two states where she is pursuing a recount, Wisconsin and Michigan, according to CBS News.
Pennsylvania is the only state where candidates cannot initiate a direct recount request themselves. They have a few options available to them, including the courts.
Lawrence Otter, a Pennsylvania attorney representing Stein’s campaign, told The Philadelphia Inquirer he planned to file suit in Commonwealth Court on Monday calling for a statewide recount. The suit was filed later in the day.
“Petitioners have grave concerns about the integrity of electronic voting machines used in their districts,” the suit stated, according to the Inquirer.
Otter is the same attorney who represented Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s campaign when the former Republican presidential candidate was nearly ousted from the statewide ballot for the April 26 Republican primary. A lawsuit filed by College junior Nathaniel Rome alleged that Kasich did not have the requisite amount of signatures to be on the ballot. Rome ultimately dropped the suit.
Stein has already successfully sought a recount in Wisconsin.
President-elect Donald Trump, in a series of tweets sent over the weekend, claimed without evidence that “millions of people” voted illegally in the presidential election.
There is no evidence of election fraud, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes, a Democrat, told the Inquirer.
In a video posted on Sunday, Stein said she will start a voter-initiated recount in Pennsylvania, a process she described as as “especially complicated.” A statewide recount in Pennsylvania will be issued if at least three voters per election district submit affidavits. According to Citizens for Election Integrity, there were 9,175 election districts in Pennsylvania as of June 2015, meaning that 27,000 voters are needed for this to happen.
It seems unlikely that Stein can produce a recount in Pennsylvania and even more unlikely that a statewide recount will allow Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to surpass Trump’s 70,638 vote lead in Pennsylvania.
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