This story has been updated.
It’s looking more likely the US could get a recount.
Jill Stein, who ran for president as the Green Party candidate, has raised $2.5 million to pay the filing fees needed to initiate a recount of ballots in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The three swing states were pivotal to Donald Trump’s victory, and a recount could change the outcome of the US presidential election.
The filing fees in the three state come to $2.2 million, but she anticipates the total cost of the recounts to be closer to $6 million to $7 million after accounting for lawyers’ fees and paying for recount observers in the states, according to her website.
Stein reached her $2.5 million goal at 2:50am Eastern Time on Thanksgiving day (Nov. 24). She launched her fundraising campaign the afternoon of Nov. 23 after J. Alex Halderman, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, noticed statistical anomalies, raising the possibility that ballot machines could’ve been hacked.
“The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania,” Halderman said in a Nov. 23 blog post.
Though Hillary Clinton’s campaign has reportedly been briefed on the findings that suggest possible tampering, it has not publicly commented on them. Stein, however, quickly took matters into her own hands in hopes of meeting the Nov. 25 filing deadline in Wisconsin. Pennsylvania’s deadline is on Nov. 28, and Michigan’s is on Nov. 30.