Humanity Hallows Issue 4 Out Now!
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By Luke Goodstadt
Since Hillary Clinton’s vote count has overtaken President-Elect Donald Trump’s by over 2 million votes, many US politicians are starting to ask questions about the overall result of the US Presidential Election.
The most prominent of these queries comes from the Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who has raised just over $6 million to fund vote recounts in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. It is unlikely that the Green Party can take any of these states from Trump. However, the margin between the President-Elect and Hillary Clinton is very small, and thus Clinton may be able to claim them.
In backing up her actions, Stein stated “The American people are concerned about the reliability of their vote”, especially since “this was an election that was riddled with hacking.”
Stein is referring to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee to attempt to gain information on campaign techniques etc. The worry lies in the fact that the majority of ballots in the US are cast via an electronic method, thus the ability for technological experts to steer these elections one way or the other was much easier in this election than ever before.
Up until this week, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has stayed quiet about these calls for recounts, having publicly conceded to Trump on the morning of November 9th. Now however, Clinton’s campaign team reportedly gave support to the calls for recounts in the three states mentioned.
On Friday 25th November, the decision was made by the authorities in Wisconsin that a recount of the votes for the Presidential election will be conducted.
Donald Trump responded to this in his typical fashion: a tweet. He posted that the decision by Wisconsin authorities was ‘sad’. He added, “So much time and money will be spent – same result!”
Mark Elias, the Clinton campaign’s General Counsel, has said that there was no evidence to conclude that the election had been sabotaged, but he added, “We have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported.”
As of the time of writing, no decision has been made by either Pennsylvania or Michigan; Michigan is still yet to declare its final results from the 8th November.
Although it is highly unlikely, if all three recounts overturn the original decision, it is possible that Clinton may take the White House. If this happens, it will mean that America will actually have a President that the majority of American citizens voted for, rather than one who was elected by the states favoured by the Electoral College System.
Despite its prominence in our lives over the last two years, and the worldwide media circus surrounding the Presidential Election, the drama may carry on for another few months yet.
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