Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has adopted a new strategy and renewed her quixotic effort to force a statewide recount of Pennsylvania’s presidential vote.
It was announced early Sunday, just hours after Stein dropped a case in the state courts, that she will now seek help in the federal courts. Stein plans to file a lawsuit in federal court on Monday seeking a statewide recount in Pennsylvania:
“We are committed to this fight to protect the civil and voting rights of all Americans,” Jonathan Abady, lead counsel for the recount campaign, said in a statement. “Over the past several days, it has become clear that the barriers to verifying the vote in Pennsylvania are so pervasive and that the state court system is so ill-equipped to address this problem that we must seek federal court intervention.”
In a series of tweets Stein said she would “escalate” #Recount2016 and demand a recount on constitutional grounds because “the people deserve answers.”
On Monday, I will escalate #Recount2016 in PA and file to demand a statewide recount on constitutional grounds. The people deserve answers.
— Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein) December 4, 2016
Stein has tried to framed the campaign as an effort to explore whether voting machines and systems had been hacked and the election result manipulated. But they have offered no evidence of hacking in Pennsylvania’s election.
The case threatens Pennsylvania’s ability to certify its presidential electors by the Dec. 13 federal deadline, Republican lawyers argued. You can read more about how the Stein recounts threaten states Electoral Votes here.
On Saturday, a GOP lawyer, Lawrence Tabas, said the case had been meant “solely for purposes to delay the Electoral College vote in Pennsylvania for President-Elect Donald Trump.”
Stein received just over 1 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania. No reasonable person expects the recount to change the outcome.
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