Watch your back, Donald: Hillary contests election results
Chris Wallace kept pestering Trump and other Republicans on whether Trump would accept the results, but Wallace and others never asked Hillary. Wallace and the rest of the media just assumed that Hillary would win.
Mark Erick Elias, counsel to Hillary Clinton, wrote on November 26, 2016:
Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides. If Jill Stein follows through as she has promised and pursues recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, we will take the same approach in those states as well. 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. 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.
Even though there is no evidence or claim of vote fraud, Stein and Hillary challenge the results in Wisconsin, and probably Pennsylvania and Michigan. But the facts do not matter, because Hillary cannot believe she lost those states. The media told her they were her states.
Trump has 290 E.C. votes, not counting Michigan. If you remove Wisconsin’s 10 votes, Trump still wins, which means that Hillary has to knock out Pennsylvania’s 20 votes. Hillary has to reverse the votes in the Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to win. This will not happen, so why is Hillary challenging the Wisconsin results with Stein?
Stein filed a petition, under oath, with Wisconsin to demand a hand recount. The basis for the petition is an affidavit by J. Alex Halderman, a computer professor at the University of Michigan. The petition is 64 pages. One half is the résumé of Halderman, and the balance is newspaper clippings and press releases by Homeland Security that the 2016 election was subject to foreign hacking.
The affidavit can be summarized as: follows: 1) somebody hacked the emails of the DNC and John Podesta; 2) somebody hacked voter rolls of Arizona and Illinois to obtain information about voters; 3) ABC reported that somebody tried to hack the voter registration of 20 states; without naming the states; and 4) Homeland Security said senior Russian officials commissioned some of these attacks. Therefore, somebody hacked the voting machines to cause Hillary to lose.
There is no evidence to the Russians or anyone else tampered with the elections in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, or any other state.
If Hillary expects to win the presidential election, then Stein, backed by Hillary, will have to file the same unfounded petition in Pennsylvania and Michigan. This is the same strategy Algore used: demand a hand recount in the counties where he thought he might pick up votes. The Supreme Court ruled that it was a violation of the equal protection clause to have hand recounts in only a few counties and not the entire state. By analogy, should we have a hand recount in all fifty states and not just Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, even when there is no evidence that the voting machines were hacked?
We can assume that Hillary and her team of attorneys have been busy the past weeks looking for any evidence of hacking or other attempts that affected the vote. But Hillary’s attorney said they had no “actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology.” So she can pretend to remain on the high road and let Stein do the dirty work of speculation and unfounded accusations. This is the Hillary we know.
If this petition were an appeal in a court trial, the court would dismiss it summarily. It is all speculation and conjecture.
The election boards in these states should dismiss these unfounded petitions.
As an aside, this should teach Trump to not be so quick to suggest that he may not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary’s email and foundation scandals. Trump said he does not want to hurt Hillary. But Hillary sure wants to hurt Trump to overturn the election results.
The real Hillary has resurfaced after a brief two-week hiatus.