Jill Stein, candidate for the Green Party’s failed bid for the White House, has filed for a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. According to the Associated Press (AP), Stein raised $7 million toward the effort, twice what she garnered for her campaign.
The AP reported that Stein alleged possible tampering with electronic voting machines in the three states. This claim which was backed by J Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, according to BBC.
The White House refuted any possibility of tampering with the election results. A senior official in the Obama administration stated to Politico, “We stand behind our election results, which accurately reflect the will of the American people.” The Clinton campaign also acknowledged a lack of evidence to support Stein’s allegations. Marc Elias, general counsel of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, said he found no “actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology,” Politico reported. Nonetheless, observers from the Clinton campaign will be present at recounts in Michigan, according to BBC.
President-elect Donald Trump countered the recount filings with allegations of his own via Twitter. “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions who voted illegally,” he tweeted on Monday. Also on Monday, Trump clarified in another tweet that he was referring to “serious voter fraud” in Virginia, California, and New Hampshire. NBC News reported that no evidence has been found to support Trump’s claim.
California Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, responded with a tweet of his own, saying, “It appears that Mr. Trump is troubled by the fact that a growing majority of Americans did not vote for him. His unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in California and elsewhere are absurd. His reckless tweets are inappropriate and unbecoming of a President-elect,” NBC News reported. Clinton won the popular vote by about 2 million votes, according to NBC News.
Also on Monday, Stein filed a suit against the Wisconsin Elections Committee. The Committee refused to require each county to conduct a recount; if Stein’s loses her suit, she will have to petition each of Wisconsin’s 80+ counties to recount votes.
A Pennsylvania recount will require Stein to provide evidence of probable vote manipulation, which the Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes says there is “absolutely no evidence” of, according to the Philadelphia Media Network.
The AP reported that while it is highly unlikely a recount will change the election outcome, the drive for funds will continue to push Stein onto the national stage. After the recount matter is settled, any leftover funds will be funneled into the Green Party for “election integrity efforts and to promote voting system reform,” Stein said. Stein also wrote on her website, “These recounts are part of an election integrity movement to attempt to shine a light on just how untrustworthy the US election system is.”
Trump denounced the recount efforts as a “scam,” and accused the Green Party of attempting to “fill up their coffers,” according to BBC. BBC also reported that Trump accused Clinton of reneging on her concession to Trump late on November 8.
One day, three teenage boys show up on the farm and trespass onto the plantation. The boys names are Garfield Smith (played by Newt Gingrich), W.T. Harper (played by Rudy Guiliani), and their leader Powel Boyd (played by Donald Trump). Powel is wild and an unpredictable outsider who uses foul language, smokes cigarettes, and has little respect for the elite plantation structure. Powel is on the farm to rekindle something lost from his idyllic childhood (Making America Great Again). Mrs. Cope doesn’t want this basket full of deplorables on her farm, but she allows them to stay even when they prove too much for her to control. She offers them sandwiches and drinks, but similar to the Book of Daniel 1:11-13, the boys refuse it because Mrs. Cope wants them to submit to her orders. Instead, the boys walk outside to the barn and steal milk. Mrs. Cope is concerned their cigarette smoking will start a fire since the farm has suffered a summer long drought. Night falls and the boys want to go to sleep in the barn, but Mrs. Cope insists they sleep in the field due to her fear that they will burn down the barn. The following day, the boys wake up and defy Mrs. Cope by riding her horses and letting the bull loose. Later in the afternoon, Mrs. Cope sees the boys throwing rocks at her mailbox and tells them she is going to call the police. The boys disappear, but as night falls Mrs. Cope smells smoke and sees the forest on her property is on fire. As she gets her servants, she approaches the fire and hears the boys laughter dancing in the fiery furnace of her forest. As fire engulfs the property, Mrs. Cope’s biggest fears have been realized. Her fortress was more fragile than she thought and her control is gone.
I tell you about Pan because he can be seen as a stand-in for millions of other neighbors, coworkers, and acquaintances. He is here, sharing our little community, because he wants to build the best life he can for his family. And while he is doing that, he makes our lives better too. But that