HARRISBURG, Pa. _ Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on Monday continued her campaign to contest the election results in three battleground states, filing suit in Pennsylvania seeking a statewide recount.
Legal papers filed in Commonwealth Court by a lawyer for Stein's campaign contend the Nov. 8 election was "illegal" and the results inaccurate based on research suggesting there might have been irregularities with electronic voting machines, among other evidence.
"Petitioners have grave concerns about the integrity of electronic voting machines used in their districts," the suit stated.
Though Monday's petition was filed by 100 Pennsylvania voters, as required by the state's election law, it is part of Stein's effort to challenge results in three states that were critical to deciding the presidential election.
Stein's camp filed a recount petition last week in Wisconsin, and is expected to do so this week Michigan. Clinton lost each of the state by fewer than 100,000 votes. She lost Pennsylvania by about 71,300 votes.
As of Monday morning, Stein had raised $6.2 million dollars, covering the costs of recounts in both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and is close to her total goal of $7 million to cover recount costs in Michigan.
But when it comes to the Keystone State, it turns out raising the money might have been the easiest step.
As Stein points out herself in a video posted on Sunday, initiating a statewide recount of Pennsylvania's vote is "especially complicated." Unlike Wisconsin, Stein can't simply file a direct request for a recount, leaving just two paths for a potential statewide audit.
Stein's lawsuit would have to present evidence that election fraud was probable in Pennsylvania. Democratic Secretary of State Pedro Cortes says there's no evidence of voting irregularities during the Nov. 8 election
"Absolutely not," Cortes told reporters. "There is no evidence whatsoever that points to any type of irregularity in any way, shape or form."
While Stein is essentially alleging that errors, tampering or hacking had occurred to affect outcomes in the three states, even computer scientists who recommended a recount to rule out tampering have gone to great lengths to make it clear there is no proof of hacking or fraud in the election results.
President-elect Donald Trump continued to slam the recount effort over the weekend, calling it a "scam" and declaring "nothing will change." Marc Elias, general counsel for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, said the Clinton campaign agrees with the recount in "principle," but also wrote that "we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology."
So instead, Stein is promoting an "especially complicated" voter-initiated recount effort that involves three voters in every precinct or election district in Pennsylvania submitting a notarized affidavit to the clerk in their individual election districts.
Lawrence Otter, a lawyer for Stein's campaign, said individual voters were filing petitions with boards of elections in several counties across the state seeking recounts in their precincts. Voters had already done so in Philadelphia, and Otter said they were expected to do so in Bucks County as well later Monday.
According to the Department of State, there were 9,163 voting precincts in Pennsylvania during the 2016 election. So Stein would need more than 27,000 voters to file notarized affidavits, but it's unclear if that avenue is even still available.
According to Wanda Murren, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, the deadline under the law for a voter-initiated recount at the county level had been Monday, Nov. 21. Many counties missed it but nearly half have already certified their results, precluding recounts there. That makes a lawsuit the only remaining option for initiating a statewide recount.
Complicating any recount effort is the fact that Pennsylvania is one of 15 states that use electronic voting machines that don't have a paper-backed audit.
"The nightmare scenario would be if Pennsylvania decides the election and it is very close," Lawrence Norden, an expert on voting machines, told the Los Angeles Times prior to the election. "You would have no paper records to do a recount."
Even if Stein were able to overcome the odds and initiate a statewide recount, it's doubtful Clinton would be able to overcome Trump's 70,638 lead in Pennsylvania. From 2000 and 2015, the outcome of the election was changed in just three of 27 elections, according to FairVote, a nonpartisan electoral reform group that researches elections. The largest swing occurred in Florida in 2000, when 1,247 votes for George W. Bush were flipped to his opponent, Al Gore, which wasn't enough to overturn the state's results.
