The Sunday News
Supporters of US President-elect Donald Trump have moved the courts to prevent or halt election recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Friday’s legal actions came less than two weeks before the states would have to complete the tasks to meet a federal deadline to certify their election results.
The moves seeking to block or halt the recounts in the states the Republican candidate narrowly won could cause delays that would make them extremely difficult or impossible to complete on time.
The presidential race is decided by the Electoral College, or a tally of wins from the state-by-state contests, rather than by the popular national vote.
Federal law requires states to resolve disputes over the appointment of electors by December 13.
Trump far surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win, with 306 electoral votes, and the recount would have to flip the result to Democrat Hillary Clinton in all three states to change the overall result.
In the popular vote, Clinton won over 2.5 million more votes than Trump, according to the Cook Political Report.
The recounts were requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who says they are necessary to ensure that voting machines were not hacked, even though there is no evidence that they were.
Stein got about one percent of the vote in all three states. Her critics say she is simply trying to raise money and her political profile while building a donor database. — Aljazeera.
