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Should Vote Recount Happen? Take The Poll: Yes Or No — Is Jill Stein 3-State Recount Effort Worth It, Or Is Election Over?

By Jonathan Vankin
Published on: 14:55 PST, Nov 27, 2016

A recount of the 2016 Presidential election votes cast in Wisconsin set to begin this week has left President-elect Donald Trump apoplectic, unleashing multiple Twitter posts not only denouncing the recount effort but even claiming without evidence or basis in reality that 3 million votes in the election were “illegal.” Those “illegal” votes, Trump said, were the reason he is losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 2.2 million.

How do you, the Inquisitr readers, view the situation? Should the vote recount happen? Or should the effort be halted? Take the poll below to register your opinion. Click on your preferred answer to the question in the poll to cast your vote in the poll, and see the current results.

https://www.playbuzz.com/inquisitr/should-the-2016-presidential-election-vote-recount-happen

Even before Trump denounced the recount, critics — including FiveThirtyEight polling expert Nate Silver — said that the effort was probably a waste of time. But proponents say that Wisconsin, as well as Michigan and Pennsylvania, were so close — with Trump winning by only about 107,000 votes combined among them — that combined with the possibility of Russian computer hackers tampering with the vote, recounting the votes in those three states is essential to ensuring the fairness and integrity of the election.

The recount effort is spearheaded by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who garnered just one percent of the nationwide popular vote and no Electoral College votes. Stein filed her recount petition in Wisconsin on Friday, and state officials said that the recount would proceed starting next week.

Here is a video of Stein explaining her rationale behind seeking the vote recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Trump won the state of Wisconsin by 22,525 votes, or 0.8 percentage points. In Pennsylvania, where more than 6 million votes were cast, Trump won by 1.1 points or 68,030 votes. And in Michigan, Trump edged Clinton by a mere 10,704 votes — just 0.2 points.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is leading the vote recount effort. [Images by Win McNamee/Getty Images]

In Michigan, state and county officials are taking an “all hands on deck” approach to the possible recount, according to a report in The Detroit Free Press on Sunday.

The results of the Michigan vote will be certified on Monday, the paper reported — but the deadline for requesting a recount in Wednesday, November 30.

All three states face a deadline of December 13 to complete their recounts — if, in fact, all three are forced to recount votes. Any state that misses the deadline risks losing its votes in the Electoral College, which meets to cast its ballots six days later.

If all three states fail to complete their recounts by December 13, that would create the possibility that Trump could be deprived of all 46 electoral votes that he earned in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. That would leave him with 260 electoral votes — 10 short of the 270 required to win the election and become president.

While Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway ridiculed the recount efforts as led by “a bunch of crybabies,” the possibility that the recount may go forward appears to have thrown Trump into a panic.

But Trump’s bizarre claim of massive “illegal” voting has no basis in fact, experts agree. Trump appears to have picked up the false factoid from the conspiracy theory site InfoWars, according to a report in The Washington Post. The bogus InfoWars story making the claim of massive illegal voting can be accessed at this link.

President Barack Obama has remained largely silent on the recount controversy, but on Sunday, his administration issued its first statement on the issue — and appeared to disapprove of the recount.

“The Kremlin probably expected that publicity surrounding the disclosures that followed the Russian government-directed compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations, would raise questions about the integrity of the election process that could have undermined the legitimacy of the president-elect,” the White House statement read. “Nevertheless, we stand behind our election results, which accurately reflect the will of the American people.”

While Trump won the election under the rules of the Electoral College, Clinton won the popular vote by a margin unprecedented for a candidate who failed to win the presidency. What do you think? To make your opinion count, take the poll above on this page.

[Featured Image By Pool Photographer/Getty Images]

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