By Jacob Carpenter
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MILWAUKEE — Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign will participate in Wisconsin’s recount, but there’s no evidence found to suggest hacking or other tampering altered the outcome, the campaign’s top lawyer said Saturday.
In a post on Medium.com, Marc Erik Elias, general counsel to Hillary for America, said the decision was “to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.” Elias said the Clinton campaign didn’t intend to request a recount, but Green Party nominee Jill Stein’s pursuit and funding of one in Wisconsin led Clinton officials to join it.
While noting that government officials have confirmed Russian hacking and interference designed to affect the U.S. presidential race, Elias said campaign staff and outsiders have found nothing to suggest votes were manipulated after they were cast. The campaign employed lawyers, data scientists and analysts to review the results, and it monitored post-election processes to audit results, Elias said.
“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,” Elias wrote.
Clinton lost Wisconsin to Donald Trump by about 22,000 votes. Stein has said she also plans to trigger recounts in Michigan, where Trump won by about 10,000 votes, and Pennsylvania, where Trump won by about 71,000 votes.
Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway shot back at the Clinton campaign Saturday in a statement to Bloomberg News.
“What a pack of sore losers,” Conway said. “After asking Mr. Trump and his team a million times on the trail, ‘Will HE accept the election results?’ it turns out Team Hillary and their new BFF Jill Stein can’t accept reality.”
In a statement to the New York Times Friday, President Barack Obama’s administration said it believes the election results “accurately reflect the will of the people.”
Like Elias, the administration noted attempts by Russia to influence the election. Government officials have said Russian hackers stole and leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. The emails brought negative attention to Clinton’s campaign.
Political and election experts have largely rejected claims of potential hacking and changing of votes, arguing that there are safeguards to thwart such attempts. Elias’ note gives no suggestion that Clinton aides expect the recount to result in any findings of malfeasance.
“But regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states,” Elias wrote, “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.”
Stein has raised $5.7 million to fund the recounts. In Wisconsin, the recount could cost more than $1 million. Stein, who received 31,000 votes for president in Wisconsin, must pay the recount expenses because she lost by more than 0.25 percent of the vote.
Wisconsin’s recount is likely to begin late next week, said Michael Haas, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Federal law requires the recount to be completed within 35 days of the election, or Dec. 13, in this case. The close deadline is likely to require county boards of canvassers to work nights and weekends, Haas said.
