Green Party Calls For Recount, Wants To Push For Open-Source Voting Machines (nbcnewyork.com)

The Green party candidate in the U.S. presidential election, Jill Stein, has raised over $5 million in donations to fund a recount in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which are the states key to Hillary Clinton's loss on November 8th. She is seeking a recount in these three states after computer scientists discovered Clinton averaged 7% worse in counties with e-voting machines vs. counties with only paper or optical scan ballots. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: On November 23, the Stein/Baraka Green Party Campaign launched an effort to ensure the integrity of our elections," calling for "publicly-owned, open source voting equipment." In approximately 48 hours (as of 1:20pm EST (GMT-5) on Nov-25-2016) $5,026,516.15 has been raised to pay for a recount in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and [they are] currently collecting towards a recount in Michigan. The Green party also states: "The Green Party Platform calls for 'publicly-owned, open source voting equipment and deploy it across the nation to ensure high national standards, performance, transparency and accountability; use verifiable paper ballots; and institute mandatory automatic random precinct recounts to ensure a high level of accuracy in election results.'" More details can be read on MSNBC news. The Washington Post asks: Why are people giving Jill Stein millions of dollars for an election recount? UPDATE 11/25/16: Washington Examiner is reporting that Green Party officials have filed for a presidential vote recount in Wisconsin.
UPDATE 11/26/16: Hillary Clinton's campaign said Saturday that it will take part in the recount in Wisconsin.

Comments

Re:Two big problems here

[MightyMartian]

Wow, 2000 called and wants it's anti-OSS argument back

Re:The real motivation

[CaptainDork]

Not true at all.

This election was won by poll-shy white women. Look it up.

Also, look at 2008 and 2012.

Koch brothers poured money into those elections and lost.

Look up Clinton's spending vs. Trump's.

When money is used for a ground game, it works.

When it's used for ads, people go pee.

It's not rigged, you're just LOSING

[Xenographic]

> You really do just make shit up, don't you?

I just love these post-fact "refutations" where you don't actually bother to cite sources or anything, even though this information is stupidly easy to find online.

Let's look at the important factual claims here, shall we? There are basically two: that she raised more here than in her presidential campaign and that the vote totals were closer in other states that Hillary won and that she's challenging states that would help Hillary win. This leads people to form the opinion that it's Hillary & co. funding this because it benefits Hillary more than Jill Stein. If we just want more confidence in the final results, then all the close states should be recounted, not just those which benefit Hillary.

That said, feel free to suggest improvements to how we vote for the future. We really should prevent vote fraud of every kind. I still remember just a few months back when Tim Kaine was saying stuff like this:

That moment would not have been as big a moment last night had Donald Trump not spent the last few weeks going around saying that the election is rigged against him. And when Donald says that, he's basically, after a campaign of attacking virtually every group he can attack now, he's attacking a central pillar of our democracy — that we run fair elections, that we accept the outcome of elections and then that we have a peaceful transfer of power.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2016/10/20/498676187/vp-candidate-kaine-trump-is-attacking-central-pillar-of-our-democracy

Claim 1 - Jill Stein got more money for a recount than her campaign:

Here's an image for easy comparison, but $5M > $3M. How do we know she got over $5M for this campaign?

"Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Files for Recount in Wisconsin, Raises More Than $5M for Recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania"
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/Green-Party-Candidate-Jill-Stein-to-Seek-Recount-in-Battleground-States-402731286.html

Jill Stein, who ran for president as the Green Party candidate, has filed paperwork to request a recount of the votes in Wisconsin just under the deadline, and has raised more than $5 million to fund other recount efforts in the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Now, how much did her presidential campaign raise? The FEC has that info here:
http://www.fec.gov/fecviewer/CandidateCommitteeDetail.do?candidateCommitteeId=P20003984&tabIndex=1

This currently gives us about $3 million dollars ('net contributions') as can be seen below:

Beginning Cash On Hand $73,681
Ending Cash On Hand $58,303
Net Contributions $3,013,441
Net Operating Expenditures $3,413,467
Debts/Loans Owed By $87,740
Debts/Loans Owed To $0

Claim 2 - The challenges are in favor of Hillary

States where we need recounts: WI, MI, and PA - source was quoted above. States NOT on the recount list NV, CO, MN, or NH - I can find no reports of recount requests here. Feel free to give sources if someone is recounting any of those.

NV is closer than PA & WI. MN is closer than PA. NH was won by just 2,732 votes - far less than any state on this list. CO had a pretty small margin too, but it was slightly larger than the three recount states.

I will also leave this here, because of all the #fakenews about "hacking" the election... never mind that MI (one of the recount states!) uses only paper ballots:

Re: When DNC loses vote, legal action follows

[LynnwoodRooster]

Correct - it's Jill Stein doing the work of the Democrat Party. Her challenge will do zero for her own results. And there are several States that were a LOT closer in terms of results - but happened to break for Hillary. Given her choice of venues for challenge, it's quite obvious that Stein is just carrying the water for the DNC. Probably hoping for her own Bernie-esque $600,000 lake-front cottage courtesy of the Clinton machine...

Re: My god!

[Plus1Entropy]

I know to you it looks like "brain damage" because it makes us skeptical of the magical man in the sky and biases us towards fact based evidence, but we like to call it "education" and "critical thinking".