WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 29: US President-elect Donald Trump has added 16 more electoral votes to his tally with authorities in Michigan certifying that he has won the state, nearly three weeks after the presidential poll.
The Michigan Board of State Canvassers, with a 4-0 vote, yesterday certified Republican nominee Trump’s 10,704-vote victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November 8 election.
70-year-old Trump’s win in Michigan gave him all the 16 electoral votes and took his tally to 306 compared to Clinton’s 232.
Trump is the first Republican presidential nominee to win Michigan since 1988.
The Board of Canvassers’ certification makes the election results official, but it also starts the 48-hour clock for Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential candidate, to seek a recount, Detroit Free Press reported.
Stein has raised more than USD 6.5 million to pay for recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
She has already filed the recount requests for Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Mark Brewer, former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party and lawyer for Stein, told the Board of Canvassers that he intends to file a request for Stein by Wednesday’s 2 pm deadline to recount all the presidential votes cast in the state.
“Jill Stein will be filing a petition with this board for a manual recount of the votes cast for president in Michigan.
The purpose of this manual recount is to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the election,” he said.
“Every vote must be counted,” Brewer was quoted as saying.
Chris Thomas, the director of elections for the state, noted that Stein received only 51,643 votes or 1.07 per cent of Michigan’s total votes in the presidential race.
“It is odd, to say the least, that a candidate with 1.07 per cent of the vote is seeking a recount,” he said. “But under Michigan law, they can do so.”
A recount would begin on Friday in the state’s 19 largest counties and run all weekend.
If a recount happens, all the ballots all 4,799,284 votes in the presidential race will be counted by hand at the county level under state supervision.
The Trump campaign has seven days to file written objections to the recount, but they cannot just challenge the recount based on the likelihood that the results will not change, Thomas said.
