DETROIT _ On the eve of her visit to Detroit, Green Party Candidate Jill Stein got some bad news from the Michigan Supreme Court: your recount effort is denied.
In an order issued Friday, the state's highest court in a 3-2 split rejected Stein's appeal that sought to continue a recount of the presidential election, concluding she had no standing to seek a recount because she wasn't an aggrieved candidate.
That's what the Michigan Court of Appeals concluded in a 3-0 ruling on Monday when it said that the recount should have never started in the first place because Stein never stood a chance to win with her fourth place finish and 1.07 percent of the vote. A federal judge upheld that finding a day later.
The Michigan Supreme Court did the same Friday night, stating it supports "the Court of Appeals' conclusion that petitioner failed to adequately allege that she "is aggrieved on account of fraud or mistake in the canvass of the votes."
Meanwhile, Stein is scheduled to hold a rally at 2 p.m. Saturday outside Cobo Center, where the controversial recount got under way on Monday, revealing all kinds of problems in Detroit's election. More than half of Detroit's precincts, however, could not conduct a recount due to a number of problems.
That, Stein's campaign has argued, is one of the reasons that the recount should be allowed to continue _ to reveal the flaws in Michigan's election process. But the Michigan Republican Party and State Attorney General's office have argued that that is not what Michigan's recount law was designed to do. The law's goal is to change the outcome of an election for a legitimately aggrieved candidate, not to audit the state's election process.
Two of Michigan's Supreme Court justices _ Robert Young and Joan Larsen _ had recused themselves from considering the case. The two are included on a list of potential appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court that President-elect Donald Trump revealed before the election.
