Clinton campaign counsel: We’ll participate in recount

An attorney for Hillary Clinton’s campaign says it will participate in the Wisconsin recount initiated by Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein.

{mosads}Marc Elias, the campaign’s general counsel, wrote in a post on Medium on Saturday that the Clinton team has been conducting an extensive review of election results, searching for any signs that the voting process had been tampered with.

He emphasized that analysts employed by the campaign have largely found no evidence to conclude that the election was sabotaged, but said that the campaign is committed to helping ensure a fair recount process.

“The campaign is grateful to all those who have expended time and effort to investigate various claims of abnormalities and irregularities,” Elias wrote. 

“While that effort has not, in our view, resulted in evidence of manipulation of results, now that a recount is underway, we believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported.”

Stein filed for a recount in Wisconsin on Friday afternoon, and has pledged to do the same in Pennsylvania and Michigan — states in which President-elect Donald Trump won or is leading by narrow margins.

Elias said the campaign would join in on recount process in those states if Stein follows through on her promise, though he noted that the margins in the three Midwestern states are larger than any that has been reversed by 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,” Elias wrote.

New York Magazine reported that a group of activists and computer scientists had implored the Clinton campaign in a conference call last week to call for recounts in the three states.

Elias wrote in his post that a number of similar calls had taken place, though most experts who were consulted by the campaign found no abnormalities in the election results.

The deadlines to file for recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan are Monday and Wednesday, respectively.