Stein’s recount efforts hope to expose ‘hacking’ in Pa. system

This week, the campaign for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein pushed for recounts of election results in the battleground states Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The campaign-backed effort contends the November 8 election was illegal and its results inaccurate.

Here in the Keystone state, there will be a Commonwealth Court hearing Monday morning in Harrisburg to consider the recount effort. The effort got underway on Thursday in a number of districts in the Philadelphia area, but the push for a statewide recount continues.

“The margin, in this case, wasn’t close enough for a statewide recount,” WHYY Senior Reporter Dave Davies said. “So what Stein’s lawyers did was to seize upon a little-known provision that says there will be a recount in any individual voting precinct where three voters ask for it with a petition and an affidavit.

“The Stein lawyers, over the last weekend, got hundreds of people to do that,” he added, “so you’re having hundreds of baby recounts.”

While a judge in Montgomery County threw out all 82 local recounts on Wednesday, one will take place in Philadelphia today. Even though the smaller recounts won’t seem to amount to much in terms of changing the result, the goal appears to be to force a statewide recount.

“They’re hoping they’ll find some discrepancies that will bolster their case,” Davies said. “The Stein lawyers have filed an official formal contest to the presidential result. This has never happened in Pennsylvania — this is unprecedented.

“What they really want is the courts in that motion — and in these individual recounts — to give their computer experts access to the voting machines and software to look for evidence of hacking,” he said.

UPDATE: The Green Party dropped its Pennsylvania court case on Saturday and will instead, take their recount bid to federal court. 

For more on the recounts in Pennsylvania, go to Dave Davies’ Off Mic blog and to listen to the interview, press play at the top of the page.