The director of Michigan University’s Center for Computer Security and Society, J. Alex Halderman, and voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz, suggested that Hillary Clinton’s campaign team demand a probe of voting in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania because they suspect they were hacked or otherwise manipulated.
The deadline for challenging the election is Friday in Wisconsin, Monday in Pennsylvania and Wednesday in Michigan.
Although the group had not found actual evidence of hacking, they found that in Wisconsin, Clinton received seven percent fewer votes in counties where electronic voting machines were used, compared with those that employed paper ballots and optical scanners. They believe that Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes. She lost Wisconsin by 27,000. A forensic audit of voting machines would be needed in addition to a recount.
More than 140,000 people have, meanwhile, signed an online petition calling for an audit of the election votes.
Current calculations give Trump 290 Electoral College votes against Clinton’s 232. To overturn Trump’s victory, Clinton would need to take Michigan along with Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral College votes and Pennsylvania’s 20.
The idea that the Republicans could have manipulated the election machines in states that were typically Democratic and run by Democrats for decades is delusory, to say the least.
In a separate move, at least six Democratic electors said they would try to block Trump from winning an Electoral College majority on December 19 and persuade other electors to follow suit. Their ultimate goal is to get rid of the Electoral College by which US presidents have been elected for 228 years.
The rebels are considering an attempt to persuade Democratic electors to keep Mr. Trump short of the 270 votes he needs to be named president. This will send the vote to the House of Representatives, in which case the rebels will join Republicans to smooth the way for an alternative, consensus president such as Mitt Romney or John Kasich.
However, such a scenario is a virtual impossibility because it would require 37 Republican electors to abandon Mr. Trump. Nevertheless, the rebels hope that such a maneuver would raise significant questions about the electoral college itself and lead to reform or termination of the electoral college.
The Democrats believe that Mrs. Clinton's victory in the popular vote should have resulted in her fairly gaining the presidency, but her higher number of votes can hardly be called fair when one considers the unfair advantages she had against Trump — a nationwide media galvanized to brainwash the public to get her elected, and 4 years building up a war chest by selling government influence, racketeering and money laundering through her Clinton Foundation.