The petition was turned in shortly before the 5 p.m. Friday deadline.
Dominick Reuter / Reuters
After raising millions through a grassroots campaign, former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed a petition in Wisconsin on Friday requesting a recount of the votes cast for president, officials said.
With some 90 minutes before the 5 p.m. local time deadline, officials with the Wisconsin Elections Commission announced on Twitter that they had received Stein's request.
Stein quickly raised $4.7 million from left-leaning voters concerned about voter fraud in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Stein set aside $2.5 million for the Wisconsin recount — which election officials said would cost around $1 million — and vowed to file the request before its deadline.
Under the state's electoral laws, the Stein campaign will have to pay the entire estimated cost for the recount before it can be ordered.
President-elect Donald Trump currently holds a lead of just over 27,000 votes over Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin, but Stein's campaign manager, David Cobb, wrote on Facebook that they believe the count may be wrong, based on reports "from cyber experts, from forensic experts, and others who are reporting to us some very troubling news about the possibility of security breaches in voting results across this country.”
The Wisconsin Election Commission told the Wisconsin State Journal that, although they haven't identified any efforts of tampering with election results, they are preparing for a recount.
“The Commission is preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes for President of the United States, as requested by these candidates,” Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Michael Haas said in a statement Friday evening.
“We have assembled an internal team to direct the recount, we have been in close consultation with our county clerk partners, and have arranged for legal representation by the Wisconsin Department of Justice,” Haas said. “We plan to hold a teleconference meeting for county clerks next week and anticipate the recount will begin late in the week after the Stein campaign has paid the recount fee, which we are still calculating.”
The federal deadline for the recount is December 13.
The Stein petition was filed with little time remaining. Some three hours before the deadline to file the petition, the Wisconsin Elections Commission had tweeted that no petition had been filed.
Two hours before the deadline, Meleiza Figueroa, the press director for Stein's campaign, told BuzzFeed News that "there were certain documents that had to be prepared before submission and they were gathering all the needed documents" before filing the petition.
In a tweet shortly after the petition was filed, Stein asked people to volunteer to observe the recount in every county in Wisconsin.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/2gpwv7s
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