https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=M4OV-xalpOU
Good morning, I’m still reporting on the Jill Stein/Hillary Clinton recount quest.
It’s over. Jill Stein missed Pennsylvania’s deadline to file for a voter-initiated recount. Swinging Pennsylvania’s vote was not just crucial to the recount effort, but an absolute mathematical necessity.
According to Wanda Murren, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State, the deadline was yesterday, Monday, Nov. 21st.
Stein filed a lawsuit challenging yesterday’s deadline but is unlikely to succeed. Stein called the Pennsylvania recount process “especially complicated.”
Unlike Wisconsin, Stein can’t simply request a recount at the statewide level. At least three voters from every one of Pennsylvania’s 9,163 precincts or election districts would have to file notarized affidavits asking for a recount.
As of this morning, less than half of the precincts have reported certified requests on behalf of the Stein/Clinton camp. That makes a lawsuit the only remaining option for initiating a statewide recount.
According to Philly.com – the online presence of the Philadelphia Inquirer – for Stein’s lawsuit to succeed, it would have to present evidence that election fraud was probable in Pennsylvania.
According to Secretary of State Pedro Cortes – a Democrat:
“There is no evidence whatsoever that points to any type of irregularity in any way, shape or form.”
But it gets worse for Stein/Clinton. Even if successful, Pennsylvania is one of only 15 states that use a type of voting machine that does not have a paper-backed audit trail. So it is unclear how such a recount could be done other than checking the math of state election officials compiling the reports from each machine.
But it gets worse. Donald Trump won the state by 70,638 votes. According to FairVote, a nonpartisan electoral reform group that researches elections, from 2000 to 2015, the largest swing as a result of a statewide recount was in Florida in the 2000 presidential race when, after weeks of a contentious investigation, a mere 1,247 votes for George W. Bush were flipped over to Al Gore – still not enough to change the outcome in that state.
Stein and Clinton would have to prove that over 56 times more votes were incorrectly tallied in the Keystone state – a virtual impossibility.
And without being able to flip Pennsylvania, it does not matter how the recount goes in Michigan or Wisconsin because all three states are needed to change the election result.
So, since the purpose of the Stein/Clinton recount mission has been to rally leftist MSM news opportunities, that won’t help much if all the remaining news is bad, and worst of all, if it makes Stein and Clinton look inept – or even whiny.
Our prediction is that Stein will fight on because she has raised over 6 million dollars to do so, but Clinton will see the handwriting on the wall today, and quickly back away from the recount effort, to instead focus her remaining energies on coercing the members of the Electoral College to change their vote when they meet on Dec. 19 in their respective state capitols.
I’m still reporting from Washington. Good day.
Bill Still is a former newspaper editor and publisher. He has written for USA Today, The Saturday Evening Post, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, OMNI magazine, and has also produced the syndicated radio program, Health News. He has written 22 books and two documentary videos and is the host of his wildly popular daily YouTube Channel the “Still Report”, the quintessential report on the economy and Washington.
