‘Audit The Vote’ Movement Gains Traction As Clinton’s Popular Vote Lead Surpasses 2 Million: Jill Stein Raises Millions To Request Recount In Battleground States

The Audit the Vote Movement continues to gain traction amid media reports that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote over the Republican opponent Donald Trump has surpassed 2 million.

Latest projections indicate that Clinton’s lead would likely increase to 2.5 million as late counting of mail-in and absentee ballots in California, New York, and Washington progress, the Independent reports.

The emerging picture of the magnitude of the margin of Clinton’s victory in the popular vote count has only helped to intensify the clamor by her supporters for an audit of the votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

The Audit the Vote movement got a major boost on Wednesday from an unexpected quarter.

Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate, announced that she plans to file for recounts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to challenge Donald Trump’s unexpected narrow victories against Clinton in the critical swing states, as reported by CNN.

She launched an online fundraising page and citing “compelling evidence of discrepancies in vote totals,” she asked her supporters for donations to raise the funds needed to request recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“These concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified,” she said in a statement released by her campaign. “We deserve elections we can trust.”

And by early Thursday, Stein has raised more than $3 million to file for a recount in Wisconsin where the deadline to challenge the vote is Friday.

Trump won in Wisconsin by a margin of 0.7 percent.

Stein’s campaign said it would need a total of about $7 million to request a recount of election results in the three key swing states.

The deadline falls on Monday in Pennsylvania, where Trump won by a 1.2 percent margin, and on Wednesday in Michigan.

The call to audit the votes in key swing states had received its first major boost when the New York Magazine reported on Tuesday, November 22, that a group of computer scientists, voting rights lawyers and activists, including the John Bonifaz, with the National Voting Rights Institute, and Professor J. Alex Halderman, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Computer Security and Society, were urging the Clinton Campaign to challenge the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The group reportedly discussed its findings of evidence that the election results in some swing states might have been tampered with during a conference call with Clinton campaign staff on Thursday.

While Halderman conceded in a blog post that the apparent discrepancies were more likely to have been due to errors in polling, he said it was also possible that Russian hackers breached the election computer systems and spread malware into voting machines in the swing states.

“The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence—paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania,” Halderman concluded.

The Audit the Vote movement appears to have taken off online on Reddit where a user posted an “Audit the Vote” message on November 20.

Regardless of tin-foil hat theories, there really is something off about the election results as they come in. Considering everything that is at stake, a vote audit should be done.

The DOJ is currently tallying calls regarding this. Phone number is – 202-353-1555. Even if it’s busy, keep calling. We should not back down from this.

https://www.justice.gov/contact-us

Share This Where Possible. Spread The Word.

A series of Twitters messages posted on November 21 by Matthew Chapman, calling for an election audit in the key swing states due to the likelihood of “election-tampering,” were also shared widely.

Chapman also urged for faithless electors to “dump Trump.”

Get ready, because I am about to go on a much angrier rant than I usually do. And I want everyone to read it start to finish.

— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) November 21, 2016

1. Democrats up and down the ballot should demand an election audit in WI, MI, FL, NC & PA. Especially PA, which has a D gov. They are not.

— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) November 21, 2016

2. Democratic lawmakers should be across the board demanding an independent investigation into Russia's election-tampering. Very few are.

— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) November 21, 2016

3. Democrats should be nationally publicizing the Louisiana Senate runoff. Pouring resources into flipping that Senate seat. They are not.

— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) November 21, 2016

https://twitter.com/SuzanEraslan/status/801075201584795648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/SuzanEraslan/status/801075332254236673?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The “Audit the Vote” movement also emerged on Facebook, with millions sharing a message calling on the Justice Department to investigate the results of the 2016 presidential election.

The Facebook message urged people to call the DOJ and demand an investigation of alleged Russian interference in the election that shifted final results for the Republican presidential candidate. The message also urged people to ask the DOJ to investigate reports of voter suppression in some states.

Questionable email messages claimed that a DOJ investigation was already on-going and that the DOJ switchboard was tallying calls from citizens. The messages claimed that if enough people call the DOJ could overturn the 2016 election results, according to Snopes.

“Something is wrong with the election results,” the Facebook message said. “Please call DOJ 202-353-1555 to leave a message with your name, city and state to request the department of justice to hold an audit of the 2016 election vote counts. Thank you and please send to friends.”

A petition on Change.org launched by a nonprofit group Verified Voting Foundation, calling for an audit of votes in key swing states, has been signed by more than 185,000 people.

However, some people who called the DOJ said they received a response that the DOJ does not audit elections.

This led to widespread inquiries about who audits elections, with some suggesting it could be the FEC.

Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether Clinton’s campaign would respond to calls for a recount. But with the deadline falling on Friday in Wisconsin, Monday in Pennsylvania, and Wednesday in Michigan, the Clinton campaign would have to move quickly if it plans to request a recount and not rely on Stein’s initiative.

[Featured Image by a Katz/Shutterstock]