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Jill Stein Cleverly Uses Clinton Supporters To Fund Green Party Initiative [Opinion]

By Tara West
Published on: 10:30 PST, Nov 25, 2016

Jill Stein may just be a marketing genius. The Green Party figurehead raised over $5 million in just days by uniting not only Green Party voters but also Hillary Clinton supporters for her cause. Stein created the “election integrity” initiative following concerns of voting machine “hacking” and ” statistical anomalies.” The Green Party is hoping that the recount will “shine a light on just how untrustworthy the U.S. election system is.” However, Jill’s marketing genius doesn’t come from demanding voting machine recounts in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but rather her inclusion of paper ballot state Michigan in the recount which effectively helped pick up Clinton supporters for her cause.

Jill Stein’s 2016 recount initiative began as the result of “statistical anomalies” in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Stein notes that due to these anomalies, voters are questioning the legitimacy of the election results. The Green Party candidate says that as Americans we “deserve elections we can trust” and until ballot machines are proven reliable, the reliability will always be called into question. Therefore, Stein is asking for a recount and for voting machines to be examined to see if there was evidence of hacking.

“After a divisive and painful presidential race, reported hacks into voter and party databases and individual email accounts are causing many American to wonder if our election results are reliable. These concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified. We deserve elections we can trust.”

According to the Daily Mail, a few computer experts expressed concern that voting machines could be hacked. One such expert, J Alex Halderman, director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, says that a hack could have resulted in Hillary Clinton losing as many as 30,000 votes in Wisconsin (she lost by 27,000 votes). However, Halderman admits that there is no evidence of a hack and that it is equally as likely that exit polls and pre-election polls were just “systematically wrong” rather than hacked. However, he says without the machines being examined, there would be no way to tell.

Therefore, Jill Stein wants to have those machines examined and for the election to be determined fair. She chose Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for recounts as the statistical anomalies were present where voting machines were used instead of paper ballots. However, the inclusion of Michigan is a little less clear.

It should be noted that Michigan does not use voting machines. The state works entirely on paper ballots which are then counted by hand or placed into an optical scanner for reading. The results were counted and results provided on November 9; however, the state then canvasses all counties which was not complete until November 23. After the official canvassing results were in, Trump won the state by just over 10,000 ballots.

With Michigan being so careful in releasing the election results in such a close race, it is safe to say that Michigan’s canvassing team was thorough in checking the official ballot totals, all of which were paper. Therefore, some have wondered by Stein would include Michigan in the recount efforts as there was no purported risk of computer hacking as no electronic ballots are received in the state.

The answer may have nothing to do with voter integrity concerns, but rather efforts to ensure the recount campaign received enough money to secure recounts in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where machines were used. Without Michigan included in the mix, Clinton supporters would have no hope of taking control of the White House. As it currently stands, once Michigan is certified on November 28, Trump will win the White House with 309 electorates. Therefore, even if Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were overturned via the vote recount effort, Clinton would still fall short of the 270 electorates needed to enter the White House.

Therefore, by including Michigan in the recount efforts, Stein was able to prey on the Clinton supporters hoping for the overturning of Donald Trump’s victory. Without Michigan, Stein would likely not have received the amount of attention from Clinton supporters that she is currently receiving for her voter integrity efforts.

Michigan will be the last state funded in Jill Stein’s initiative and most experts agree that the chances of all three states’ election results are slim. However, that hasn’t stopped Clinton supporters from continuing to share Jill’s recount efforts.

Five Thirty Eight provides an overview as to why they believe demographics, not hacking, can explain the concerns outlined in Jill Stein’s recount proposal.

“We found no apparent correlation between voting method and outcome in six of the eight states, and a thin possible link between voting method and results in Wisconsin and Texas. However, the two states showed opposite results: The use of any machine voting in a county was associated with a 5.6-percentage-point reduction in Democratic two-party vote share in Wisconsin but a 2.7-point increase in Texas, both of which were statistically significant. Even if we focus only on Wisconsin, the effect disappears when we weight our results by population. More than 75 percent of Wisconsin’s population lives in the 23 most populous counties, which don’t appear to show any evidence for an effect driven by voting systems. To have effectively manipulated the statewide vote total, hackers probably would have needed to target some of these larger counties. When we included all counties but weighted the regression by the number of people living in each county, the statistical significance of the opposite effects in Wisconsin and Texas both evaporated.”

Though Jill may be using the power of hope to gain financial support from Clinton supporters, she claims the recount efforts are not being performed to help Clinton.

Still others have suggested the whole voter integrity initiative may be a clever way to gain more money for the Green Party as funds do not have to go directly to recounts.

Do you think that Jill Stein strategically included Michigan, a paper ballot state, in the voter integrity efforts to ensure an increase in funds from Clinton supporters? Did she prey on them by providing a covert false sense of hope within the Clinton-supporting community? Could Clinton supporters actually be unknowingly providing funds for the growth of the Green Party? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

[Featured Image by D. Ross Cameron/AP Images]

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