By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--December 2, 2016
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Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette wants the Michigan Supreme Court to halt a presidential recount in Michigan before it begins. In a court action filed today, Schuette echoes arguments made for President-elect Donald Trump, arguing Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who received just over 1% of the vote in Michigan, is not an "aggrieved" candidate entitled to a recount, and there isn't time to complete a recount, even if Stein was entitled to one. "If allowed to proceed, the statewide hand recount could cost Michigan taxpayers millions of dollars and would put Michigan voters at risk of being disenfranchised in the electoral college," Schuette, in a filing signed by Chief Legal Counsel Matthew Schneider, said in asking the Michigan Supreme Court for immediate consideration of his petition barring a recount.
Wisconsin's last statewide recount was in 2011 for a state Supreme Court seat and the outcome did not change. The recount showed Justice David Prosser defeated challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by 7,004 votes — a slightly tighter margin than the 7,316-vote victory he had in initial returns. That recount took more than a month. This one would have to happen more quickly because of a federal law that says states must complete presidential recounts within 35 days of the election to ensure their electoral votes are counted. This year, that's Dec. 13. "You may potentially have the state electoral votes at stake if it doesn't get done by then," said Haas. A lawyer with Stein's campaign has said it wants the recount done by hand. That would take longer and require a judge's order, Haas said.Let's deal with this, because from everything I can find the panic over this is almost entirely baseless. What Haas is referring to is that, if there are questions about the certification of the election, Congress could theoretically have the discretion to disregard a state's results and refuse to recognize its electors. That's true, technically, but there is zero chance it would actually happen. Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania can all certify the original results - Stein's recount demand notwithstanding - and the Republican-controlled Congress is certainly not going to turn away their electors because Jill Stein used a well-timed legal maneuver to rend those certifications arguably invalid. I don't know if that's Stein's real gambit here, but if it is, it has zero chance of succeeding. The only thing she's doing is mucking up the works and causing a lot of extra work for state employees in three states. Hopefully Bill Schuette's motion to stop Michigan's recount is successful, and with any luck the other two states manage to avoid this complete waste of time as well. Donald Trump won the election. That's a fact and it's not going to change. We have more important things to do at this point than try to re-run a campaign that no one wants going into overtime. Except the losers, I guess. But they lost. Screw them.
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