TOTAL RE-COUNTING .

TOTAL RE-COUNTING .

Not many of us want to accept a Trump win { that Trump actually won ...}but its going to be a matter of debate . Since the election was close . Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote. Recounting is going to be a challenge legally. President-elect Donald Trump broke his silence Saturday on the multi-state vote-recount effort led by Jill Stein and joined this weekend by Hillary Clinton, another failed 2016 White House candidate, calling the effort "ridiculous” and a scam. Stein, the Green Party candidate, started the effort a couple of days ago to get recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- states that Trump surprisingly won. Mrs Clinton was then reacting to Mr Trump's refusal to respect the outcome.The recount in Wisconsin was initiated by Green Party candidate Jill Stein.The state was narrowly won by Mr Trump.Dr Stein also wants recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, citing (1)>> "statistical anomalies".The Green Party nominee reportedly wants to be sure computer hackers did not skew the poll in favor of Mr Trump.Concerns over possible Russian interference { I honestly don't believe it was (2)>> the Russians , I believe the GOP inside job did it ..}  had been expressed in the run-up to the vote.Stein has raised $5.8 million toward her goal of $7 million and on Friday made her first official move -- requesting a recount in Wisconsin.  His campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told Bloomberg, “What a pack of sore losers. After asking Mr. Trump and his team a million times on the trail, ‘Will HE accept the election results?’ it turns out Team Hillary and her new BFF Jill Stein can’t accept reality.” Stein was critical of Clinton during the election. Trump also unleashed a slew of tweets saying nothing will change and pointing out that Clinton criticized him during a debate for saying (3)>>the election was rigged. Trump campaigned several times in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a state that is the home to Republican National Committee Chairman (and now Trump chief of staff) Reince Priebus as well as House Speaker Paul Ryan. The state’s GOP had honed its get-out-the-vote machine during the Walker recall wars over public sector collective bargaining. Last Thursday, the activists held a conference call with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case, according to a source briefed on the call. The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000. While it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review — especially in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee. In a scenario where Stein would go forward with the plan, and the recounts would give Clinton the win in all three swing states, Trump would find himself out of a President job come January. Clinton’s new electoral votes tally would be 278, while Trump’s votes would fall to 260. That would turn Clinton into the next President-elect. I doubt that a new recount will change the outcome of this election. However Stein has the same right as candidate as Trump to ask for an recount. Anyway was Trump who first question the integrity of our democratic process by saying that the system was corrupted

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>> "statistical anomalies". Federal law requires that all recounts be finished 35 days after the election, which is Dec. 13. One or both of the candidates will be required to pay for the recount.  Other experts have disputed the unproven hacking claims, which were raised in the media shortly before Stein launched her recount fundraising efforts, and the Wisconsin GOP has labeled the recount “absurd.” Some have also accused Stein of wasting money in a scenario that is highly unlikely to overturn the election results; Stein says she is concerned about election integrity.Meanwhile, the Obama administration is defending the election results, according to Politico,saying, “it has seen no evidence of hackers tampering with the 2016 presidential election” and adding, “We stand behind our election results, which accurately reflect the will of the American people.”   According to current tallies, Trump has won 290 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232, with Michigan’s 16 votes not apportioned because the race there is still too close to call. It would take overturning the results in both Wisconsin (10 Electoral College votes) and Pennsylvania (20 votes), in addition to winning Michigan’s 16, for Clinton to win the Electoral College. There is also the complicating factor of “faithless electors,” or members of the Electoral College who do not vote according to the popular vote in their states. At least six electoral voters have said they would not vote for Trump, despite the fact that he won their states.  (2)>> the Russians .The Clinton campaign and various intelligence agencies have accused the Russian government of staging a series of hacks – including those published by WikiLeaks – that hurt Clinton’s chances during the campaign, including hacking into the emails of her campaign chairman, John Podesta. The group seeking the recount has not proven any election hacking or manipulation but argues the previous hacks mean the election’s integrity should be validated.Stein told CNN: “We think the forensic computer experts have raised serious questions. What we do know is that this was a hack-riddled election, we saw hacks into voter databases, into party databases, into individual email accounts.”  (3)>>the election was rigged.   Technically it's up to each state to certify the election results...a candidate "conceding" is not a legal move, but simply a political move...conducting a recount is an arduous process and the results are in many cases less reliable than the initial results...hundreds of thousands of paper ballots in the case of paper ballot districts must be carefully hand-counted by teams and then recounted a second time by a second team...if the results are printed sheets from voting machines, those tallies will be added up again by hand...if the process really starts, both major parties will have to enlist thousands of observers and hundreds of lawyers to carefully monitor the counts and tallies...each step is subject to legal challenges which could mean spending time in state courts...plus there is a deadline to present the results to the electoral college which is December 13th...and the electors meet and vote on December 19th...Congress will then certify the results of the vote on January 6th...if the recounts appear to be faulty, Congress can choose to not accept them...since there are more Republican governors and Congress is controlled by the Republicans, any results that appear to be faulty will probably be rejected...the dems can hope these recounts will change the outcome, but in reality its more of a longshot than they think...and any change in the outcome will unleash a Constitutional crisis which will make 2000 seem like a cakewalk...  Instead of totting up each person's vote, in the US every state gets a certain number of votes depending partly on the size of its population. The way it's worked out means there's a minimum of three votes per state.In most states, the most popular candidate wins all of its votes, even if 49% of people voted a different way. The system is different in Maine and Nebraska, where voting is broken down into Congressional districts, which means not all the state's electoral college votes have to go to the same candidate.Winning a state like California, which gets 55 of the total 538 electoral college votes, will put a candidate a long way towards the 270 state votes needed to win the presidency. Even if they win that state by a single vote, they get all 55 votes.It is better to win by a small margin in lots of states than win by a landslide in just a few - the scale of the win (and therefore the number of people who support you) is meaningless - you still only get one state with a fixed number of electoral college votes.