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on tuesday, researchers announced that there<u+2019>s enough evidence of hacking or foul play to ask for an audit of three state<u+2019>s voting tabulations: wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. donald trump won those three states by a narrow margin and without them, he would have lost. 




there<u+2019>s a movement to ask the justice department to demand the audits, but they might not have to. help is coming from a surprising source, the green party presidential candidate jill stein. she<u+2019>s calling for a recount in those three states and we can help her get one. 




<u+201c>after a divisive and painful presidential race,<u+201d> the green party candidate said in a statement, <u+201c>reported hacks into voter and party databases and individual email accounts are causing many americans to wonder if our election results are reliable.<u+201d> it's official: jill stein announces plans to file for a recount in pa, mi & wi. from her release: pic.twitter.com/yh0gcvbpor 




<u+2014> alexandra jaffe (@ajjaffe) november 23, 2016 




stein may have a case: 




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<u+2019>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 <u+2014> especially in light of the fact that the obama white house has accused the russian government of hacking the democratic national committee. 




source: ny magazine 




the math would still be tight. michigan<u+2019>s count still isn<u+2019>t complete, but it<u+2019>s likely that their 16 electoral votes would add to trump<u+2019>s 290. if those three states were suddenly to suddenly turn blue (trump won the three states with a combined vote difference of just over 100,000), trump would have 260 electoral votes and clinton would have a total of 278 electoral votes. 270 are needed to win. 




stein wouldn<u+2019>t end up winning the election, no matter what. it<u+2019>s hard to imagine what her motive would be, other than transparency and regardless of how you feel about her, that<u+2019>s laudable. 




what she<u+2019>s lacking so far is money. she needs to raise $2 million by friday at 4:00 pm central time. so far, she<u+2019>s raised less than 10 percent of that. 




doing something like this may have its downsides, although not too far down. the confidence in the electoral college is already eroding. there<u+2019>s no reason at all that three midwestern states should prevent the clear popular winner from becoming president. the biggest risk is that disgruntled trump supporters could lash out, but they are lashing out as winners, so let<u+2019>s not let that stop us from taking the time to ensure that our democracy stays intact.
in a bizarre twist, jill stein could give the presidency to hillary <u+2013> new century times
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