2016 | Week of December 5 | #1180
Your vote for president in the election held on November 8 is now being counted—again. This statewide recount is a waste of manpower, at a minimum, and it really doesn’t matter who is paying for the endeavor. What matters is protecting your vote.
Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for president, requested recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, states where Trump won but with slim margins. In each of the 3 states, Stein drew right at 1% of the total vote.She finished 4th in all 3 states.
So what’s she trying to prove? No one really knows, but since there is statistically no way she can win in any of the 3 states, there has to be another reason. Maybe it’s as simple as remorse that in all 3 of the states, had Stein not been on the ballot, Clinton very likely would have won. She claims she’s doing this because she is standing up “for a vote that is accurate, secure, fair and just, in which every vote counts.”[1]
Drilling down a bit, however, her words ring very hollow. In order for the recounts in these 3 states to make any real difference in the election, as in giving the win to Clinton rather than Trump, the election would have to flip in all 3 states.
Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes, Michigan 16 and Wisconsin 10, for a total of 46. Right now, Trump has 306 electoral votes and Clinton has 232. If all 46 went to Clinton, she’d have 278, just 8 more than the required 270 to win—and Trump would have 260, 10 below what he would need. Obviously Stein cherry-picked the states, leaving alone states like New Hampshire, where Clinton beat Trump by less than 3000 votes out of nearly 750,000 ballots. Surely, Jill Stein doesn’t really believe that all 3 of these states are going to find enough discrepancies—at least legally—to give the election to Hillary Clinton. If any one state fails to flip, the national election stays the same.
Personally, I believe Stein’s hope isn’t in the vote being upset in any of these states. I believe she is hoping all the states miss the deadline for finishing the recount in time for the electoral votes to be counted. In each state, she waited until the very last minute to request a recount and to pay for it.
Wisconsin’s count started last Friday and must be completed, per instructions from the Wisconsin Election Commission, by 8 p.m. Monday, December 12, one day before the official results are given to the electors in the Electoral College. Earlier this week, a federal court ordered that Michigan’s recount must proceed; and Stein indicated she was going to federal court in Pennsylvania to try to force the recount there.
December 13 isn’t just the deadline for Wisconsin; that’s a national deadline. Wisconsin’s recounting 3 million votes, which is huge; but Michigan is looking at nearly 5 million, and Pennsylvania at nearly 6 million. Michigan and Pennsylvania are looking at nearly insurmountable odds of finishing on time—and much will have to go right in all 72 Wisconsin counties for us to meet the deadline.
Talk about disenfranchising voters! If Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, earned by the candidate winning the popular vote in our state, don’t get counted in the official electoral college vote, I’ll be more furious than I am now over this recount. There’s no way I believe we will find over 22,000 votes that go to Clinton and away from Trump.
Remember the last statewide recall we had? It was in the spring of 2011 in a State Supreme Court race. Out of about 1.5 million votes cast, David Prosser had a 7300-vote margin over Linda Kloppenburg. After a laborious, costly recount, the net difference was changed to 7000 votes, meaning out of 1.5 million votes, a difference of only 300 votes. Imagine what it would take to get to 22,000.
I believe as citizens we all need to stay vigilant on this recount. Visit wifamilyaction.org to find out what you can do to be involved with the recount in your county. We encourage, we urge citizen observers, which is totally legal. Don’t let your vote be negated or stolen. Protect your vote by being informed and involved with this ridiculous, time-wasting, and potentially disenfranchising recount.
For Wisconsin Family Council this is Julaine Appling reminding you the Prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/05/jill-stein-vote-recount-trump-tower
