NEW YORK -- A group of election lawyers and data experts has asked Hillary Clinton's campaign to call for a recount of the vote totals in three battleground states -- Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- to ensure that a cyberattack was not committed to manipulate the totals.

There is no evidence that the results were hacked or that electronic voting machines were compromised. The Clinton campaign on Wednesday did not respond to a request for comment as to whether it would petition for a recount before the three states' fast-approaching deadlines to ask for one.

President-elect Donald Trump won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by razor-thin margins and has a small lead in Michigan. All three states had been reliably Democratic in recent presidential elections.

The group, led by voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, contacted the Clinton campaign this week. That call, which was first reported by New York Magazine, raised the possibility that Clinton may have received fewer votes than expected in some counties that rely on electronic voting machines.

But Halderman, in an article posted on Medium on Wednesday, stressed that the group has no evidence of a cyberattack or voting irregularities. He urged that a recount be done just to eliminate the possibility.

"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 wrote.

Recounts, which are often costly and time-intensive efforts, would likely only be initiated if the Clinton camp pushed for one, though Wisconsin independently announced that it would conduct an audit of its vote. A call for a recount, particularly coming on the heels of a fiercely contested and sharply partisan election, would likely be cheered by Democrats but denounced by Republicans eager to focus on governing.

A request to the Trump transition team for comment was not immediately returned.

Trump's campaign had long believed that his message of economic populism would resonate in the Rust Belt. He frequently campaigned in Pennsylvania and made a late push in both Wisconsin and Michigan, successfully turning out white working-class voters whom pollsters may have missed.

Many pre-election polls showed Clinton with slight leads. While advocating for the recounts, Halderman writes that "the most likely explanation" for Trump's surprise win "is that the polls were systematically wrong."

The deadlines for petitioning for a recount in all three states are in the coming days, with Wisconsin's today. Green Party candidate Jill Stein announced a fundraising effort Wednesday to pay for such recounts.

The focal point of any possible electoral cyberattack presumably would have been electronic voting machines that, whether or not they are connected to the Internet, could be infected with malware that could change vote totals. But many of those machines produce a paper record of the vote that could be checked to see if the vote tabulations are accurate.

Pennsylvania is considered one of the states most susceptible to hacking because 96 percent of its voting machines have no paper trail. Wisconsin is far less vulnerable because it uses electronic machines with voter-verifiable paper trails in most counties. Michigan is considered the safest of the three because it uses paper ballots.

Officials in the three states confirmed that no recounts have been ordered. A spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department says it is not tallying the number of voting complaints to determine whether federal action is warranted.

Information for this article was contributed by Eric Tucker of The Associated Press.</s>It was 3:04 p.m. Wednesday when Stein and her campaign manager, David Cobb, announced on her Facebook page that she was seeking donations in order to file for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

"Another people-powered win!" wrote Stein in an announcement on her Facebook page late Thursday night. "Congratulations on meeting the recount costs for both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania! We are now focusing on raising the needed funds for Michigan's recount (due Wednesday)."

In the roughly two days since Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein called for a recount in three key battleground states, she's met her fund-raising goal — twice — having raised over $4.5 million and counting.

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Initially seeking the $2.2 million needed for the states' filing fees, Stein hit her first goal by about 1:30 a.m. Thursday. She then upped her goal to $4.5 million — meeting it by about 11 that night.

Stein says on her website that the overall costs for recounts in all three states will be roughly $7 million — her next goal.

"With your help, we are raising money to demand recounts in these three states where the data suggests a significant need to verify machine-counted vote totals," read a statement about the recount on Stein's website.

Stating that the recount effort "is not intended to help Hillary Clinton," Stein's website claims that "[e]lection integrity experts" had raised concerns about "statistical anomalies" in those three states.

Stein's efforts for a recount come at a time when activists have launched different initiatives in efforts to try to keep President-elect Donald Trump out of the White House.

A Change.org petition asking the Electoral College to vote for Clinton on Dec. 19 has amassed over 4 million supporters, and a recently published New York magazine article reported that activists had claimed to have found data — but no proof — showing that results may have been "manipulated or hacked" in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — three states where Clinton lost by just a narrow margin.

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However, one of the computer scientists, J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor from the University of Michigan, said in a blog post Wednesday morning that the magazine's article was inaccurate.

"Were this year's deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked," Halderman wrote.

And while Trump won the Electoral College, thereby winning the Oval Office, Clinton leads him in the popular vote by more than 2 million, according to Politico.

Stein, a Lexington, Mass., doctor who finished fourth in the race with about 1 percent of the vote, raised $3.5 million for her campaign during the election season, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Matt Rocheleau of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Aimee Ortiz can be reached at aimee.ortiz@globe.com. Follow her on twitter @aimee_ortiz.</s>Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on Thursday launched a bid to seek a vote recount in Wisconsin, the first of three Rust Belt states won by Donald Trump where she intends to challenge the results.

Stein’s campaign announced the same day that it had raised the $1.1 million necessary to fund a recount in Wisconsin and was on track to do the same in Pennsylvania and Michigan, having raised $2.7 million of a $4.5 million goal.

Her campaign has cited unspecified “anomalies” as grounds to mount a challenge in all three states.

The move comes amid stepped-up calls from some of Trump’s left-wing opponents to challenge the results of the Nov. 8 election, which was marked by warnings of foreign hacking and vote rigging.

“The unexpected results of the election and reported anomalies need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified,” Stein said on her website. “We deserve elections we can trust.”

Although there is virtually no chance of overturning the result, the demands could reignite debate over the legitimacy of Trump’s election, already fueled by Democrat Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote which now stands at 2 million.

“Raising money to pay for the first round so quickly is a miraculous feat and a tribute to the power of grass-roots organizing,” Stein’s website read.

The Midwestern state of Wisconsin was a key battleground in the election, helping propel the Republican Trump to a victory that stunned the nation.

Trump also won swing state Pennsylvania, and claimed a razor-thin victory in Michigan according to unofficial results released Wednesday.

Although she lost in the indirect electoral college tally, which decides who wins the White House, Clinton’s lead in the popular vote has risen as official results are finalized, narrowing the result in some swing states where she lost.

Clinton conceded on Nov. 9 and her campaign is not supporting the recount calls.

Stein’s demands follow a bitter presidential campaign that included persistent charges of Russian hacking and fraud.

Trump also warned during his campaign that the election would be “rigged,” and refused to say whether he would accept the results.

Any result change would not help Stein, who won just over 1.1 percent of Wisconsin’s vote.

But she launched the recount effort after computer scientists reportedly told the Clinton campaign the election may have been rigged in Trump’s favor.

The scientists, including University of Michigan’s J. Alex Halderman, together with voting rights activist John Bonifaz and others, said Clinton’s votes were 7 percent below expectations in counties that tallied votes with electronic machines.

“These recounts are part of an election integrity movement to attempt to shine a light on just how untrustworthy the U.S. election system is,” Stein’s website said, adding that the attempt is “not intended to help Hillary Clinton.”

Clinton lost by a razor-thin margin of around 27,000 votes in Wisconsin and 60,000 votes in Pennsylvania.

Unofficial results released by Michigan’s secretary of state’s office, put Trump ahead by a mere 10,704 votes.

“I think it’s only natural and good for Americans to be reassured that our votes are counted,” Stein told CNN Thursday, “especially after such a divisive and bitter election where 80 percent of Americans … basically said they were disgusted with this election.”

But one of the scientists she cites, Halderman, Wednesday sought to dampen mounting speculation that recounts would change the election’s result.

“Were this year’s deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack?” he wrote on Medium. “Probably not.”

Rather, the polling was more likely “systematically wrong.”

The only way to remove any lingering controversy, however, would be to study “paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states,” he added.

The well-known statistician Nate Silver was also skeptical about any possible change in the results, tweeting that the disputed voting patterns “are well-explained by demographics — not hacking.”

Wisconsin swung Republican this month for the time since voters there helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1984.

It is unclear how much success Stein will have challenging the results in other states.

A recount filing costs $500,000 in Pennsylvania, due on Monday. The filing fee in Michigan is $600,000, due by Wednesday.

Stein’s campaign anticipates eventually needing $6 million to $7 million to cover attorney fees and statewide recount observation costs.</s>"Look who 'can't accept the election results' Hillary Clinton Supporters Call for Vote Recount in Battleground States," Kellyanne Conway tweeted while linking to a New York Times story about the call for a recount.

Conway's turn-the-tables dig comes after Trump himself had warned during the campaign that he might not accept the outcome if Clinton won.

Clinton won 2 million more votes than Trump and some academic and voting experts have suggested that the election results in three key states should be challenged because of possible irregularities in voting patterns that they say could be the result of hacking.

The Clinton campaign has not called for a recount, nor has the Democratic National Committee. And no hard evidence of hacking has been brought forward.

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and others are seeking an audit and recount of the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The voting experts have reportedly alerted Clinton's camp of the possibility of hacks in key counties in those states. The Stein campaign has raised more than $2 million to pay for the recounts and is now trying to raise $4.5 million. Stein, who does not stand to win anything if the results are changed, said her effort is "not intended to help Clinton. "These recounts are part of an election integrity movement to attempt to shine a light on just how untrustworthy the U.S. election system is," she said on her website. Trump was repeatedly criticized before the election for warning that the outcome could be "rigged" and refusing to say if he would accept the results if Clinton won. "I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election -- if I win," Trump to supporters at a Ohio rally in October.</s>Politicians across the country are calling for ballot recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in light of reports of potential voting machine manipulation.

And the seemingly overzealous prospect became tangible early Thursday as Green Party candidate Jill Stein announced that her campaign had raised the $2.5 million necessary to file for audits in the three Rust Belt states.

Stein’s camp launched the “#RECOUNT2016” fundraiser Wednesday, as Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead against Donald Trump surpassed 2 million. Less than 24 hours later, the Green Party nominee’s fundraiser had smashed the monetary glass ceiling…[+]</s>"Look who 'can't accept the election results' Hillary Clinton Supporters Call for Vote Recount in Battleground States," Kellyanne Conway tweeted while linking to a New York Times story about the call for a recount.

Conway's turn-the-tables dig comes after Trump himself had warned during the campaign that he might not accept the outcome if Clinton won.

Clinton won 2 million more votes than Trump and some academic and voting experts have suggested that the election results in three key states should be challenged because of possible irregularities in voting patterns that they say could be the result of hacking.

The Clinton campaign has not called for a recount, nor has the Democratic National Committee. And no hard evidence of hacking has been brought forward.

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and others are seeking an audit and recount of the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The voting experts have reportedly alerted Clinton's camp of the possibility of hacks in key counties in those states. The Stein campaign has raised more than $2 million to pay for the recounts and is now trying to raise $4.5 million. Stein, who does not stand to win anything if the results are changed, said her effort is "not intended to help Clinton. "These recounts are part of an election integrity movement to attempt to shine a light on just how untrustworthy the U.S. election system is," she said on her website. Trump was repeatedly criticized before the election for warning that the outcome could be "rigged" and refusing to say if he would accept the results if Clinton won. "I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election -- if I win," Trump to supporters at a Ohio rally in October.</s>NEW YORK — A group of election lawyers and data experts has asked Hillary Clinton’s campaign to call for a recount of the vote totals in three battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — to ensure that a cyberattack was not committed to manipulate the totals.

There is no evidence that the results were hacked or that electronic voting machines were compromised. The Clinton campaign on Wednesday did not respond to a request for comment as to whether it would petition for a recount before the three states’ fast-approaching deadlines to ask for one.

President-elect Donald Trump won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by razor-thin margins and has a small lead in Michigan. All three states had been reliably Democratic in recent presidential elections.

The group, led by voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, contacted the Clinton campaign this week. That call, which was first reported by New York Magazine, raised the possibility that Clinton may have received fewer votes than expected in some counties that rely on electronic voting machines.

But Halderman, in an article posted on Medium on Wednesday, stressed that the group has no evidence of a cyberattack or voting irregularities. He urged that a recount be ordered just to eliminate the possibility.

“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 wrote.

Recounts, which are often costly and time-intensive efforts, would likely only be initiated if the Clinton camp pushed for one, though Wisconsin independently announced that it would conduct an audit of its vote. A call for a recount, particularly coming on the heels of a fiercely contested and sharply partisan election, would likely be cheered by Democrats but denounced by Republicans eager to focus on governing.

A request to the Trump transition team for comment was not immediately returned.

Trump’s campaign had long believed that his message of economic populism would resonate in the Rust Belt. He frequently campaigned in Pennsylvania and made a late push in both Wisconsin and Michigan, successfully turning out white working-class voters whom pollsters may have missed.

Many pre-election polls showed Clinton with slight leads. While advocating for the recounts, Halderman writes that “the most likely explanation” for Trump’s surprise win “is that the polls were systematically wrong.”

The deadlines for petitioning for a recount in all three states are in the coming days, with Wisconsin’s on Friday. Green Party candidate Jill Stein announced a fundraising effort Wednesday to pay for such recounts.

The focal point of any possible electoral cyberattack presumably would have been electronic voting machines that, whether or not they are connected to the internet, could be infected with malware that could change vote totals. But many of those machines produce a paper record of the vote that could be checked to see if the vote tabulations are accurate.

Pennsylvania is considered one of the states most susceptible to hacking because 96 per cent of its voting machines have no paper trail. Wisconsin is far less vulnerable because it uses electronic machines with voter-verifiable paper trails in most counties. Michigan is considered the safest of the three because it uses paper ballots.

Officials in the three states confirmed that no recounts have been ordered. A spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department says it is not tallying the number of voting complaints to determine whether federal action is warranted.

Many election experts have called for routine post-election audits designed to boost public confidence in vote outcomes, by guarding against both tampering and natural vote-counting mistakes. These could involve spot-checks of the voting records and ballots, typically in randomly selected precincts, to make sure that votes were accurately recorded.

In many states, audits involve hand-counting the votes on paper ballots and comparing the results to the totals stored in the state’s electronic voting system. Such audits do sometimes turn up mistakes that reverse an election. That happened in Florida’s Palm Beach County in 2012, when a post-election audit determined that the “winners” in two city council races were actually losers.

Routine audits also make it possible to confirm the accuracy of elections without putting the onus on losing candidates to call for a recount. In states without regular audits, a candidate who questions the results gets “painted as a sore loser,” Pamela Smith, president of the non-profit Verified Voting, said in an interview earlier this year. “If you do a regular audit, you often don’t need a recount. It either shows the count was right or you find something.”

Any attempted hack to swing the results in three states would have been a massive and unprecedented undertaking. But electoral security was an issue that loomed large in many Americans’ minds this year as the Democratic National Committee and several Clinton staffers had their emails breached and later released. U.S. security officials believe that hack of email was orchestrated by Russian hackers.

Hamilton reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.</s>"Look who 'can't accept the election results' Hillary Clinton Supporters Call for Vote Recount in Battleground States," Kellyanne Conway tweeted while linking to a New York Times story about the call for a recount.

Conway's turn-the-tables dig comes after Trump himself had warned during the campaign that he might not accept the outcome if Clinton won.

Clinton won 2 million more votes than Trump and some academic and voting experts have suggested that the election results in three key states should be challenged because of possible irregularities in voting patterns that they say could be the result of hacking.

The Clinton campaign has not called for a recount, nor has the Democratic National Committee. And no hard evidence of hacking has been brought forward.

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and others are seeking an audit and recount of the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The voting experts have reportedly alerted Clinton's camp of the possibility of hacks in key counties in those states. The Stein campaign has raised more than $2 million to pay for the recounts and is now trying to raise $4.5 million. Stein, who does not stand to win anything if the results are changed, said her effort is "not intended to help Clinton. "These recounts are part of an election integrity movement to attempt to shine a light on just how untrustworthy the U.S. election system is," she said on her website. Trump was repeatedly criticized before the election for warning that the outcome could be "rigged" and refusing to say if he would accept the results if Clinton won. "I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election -- if I win," Trump to supporters at a Ohio rally in October.</s>Jill Stein, the US Green party’s presidential candidate, is prepared to request recounts of the election result in several key battleground states, her campaign said on Wednesday.

Stein launched an online fundraising page seeking donations toward a multimillion-dollar fund she said was needed to request reviews of the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Before midnight EST on Wednesday, the drive had already raised more than the $2 million necessary to file for a recount in Wisconsin, where the deadline to challenge is on Friday.

Stein said she was acting due to “compelling evidence of voting anomalies” and that data analysis had indicated “significant discrepancies in vote totals” that were released by state authorities.

“These concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified,” she said in a statement.

The fundraising page said it expected to need around $6m-7m to challenge the results in all three states.

Stein’s move came amid growing calls for recounts or audits of the election results by groups of academics and activists concerned that foreign hackers may have interfered with election systems.

The concerned groups have been urging Hillary Clinton, the defeated Democratic nominee, to join their cause.

Donald Trump won unexpected and narrow victories against Clinton in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin earlier this month and may yet win Michigan, where a final result has not yet been declared.

Stein and her campaign made clear they were acting because they wanted to ensure the election results were authentic, rather than because they thought she had actually won any of the contests.

Several states allow any candidate who was on the ballot to request a recount.

She and those seeking recounts will need to move swiftly. This Friday is the deadline for requesting a recount in Wisconsin, where Trump’s winning margin stands at 0.7 per cent.

In Pennsylvania, where his margin is 1.2 per cent, the deadline falls on Monday. In Michigan, where the Trump lead is currently just 0.3 per cent, the deadline is Wednesday 30th November.</s>NEW YORK — A group of election lawyers and data experts has asked Hillary Clinton’s campaign to call for a recount of the vote totals in three battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — to ensure that a cyberattack was not committed to manipulate the totals.

There is no evidence that the results were hacked or that electronic voting machines were compromised. The Clinton campaign on Wednesday did not respond to a request for comment as to whether it would petition for a recount before the three states’ fast-approaching deadlines to ask for one.

President-elect Donald Trump won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by razor-thin margins and has a small lead in Michigan. All three states had been reliably Democratic in recent presidential elections.

The group, led by voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, contacted the Clinton campaign this week. That call, which was first reported by New York Magazine, raised the possibility that Clinton may have received fewer votes than expected in some counties that rely on electronic voting machines.

But Halderman, in an article posted on Medium on Wednesday, stressed that the group has no evidence of a cyberattack or voting irregularities. He urged that a recount be ordered just to eliminate the possibility.

“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 wrote.

Recounts, which are often costly and time-intensive efforts, would likely only be initiated if the Clinton camp pushed for one, though Wisconsin independently announced that it would conduct an audit of its vote. A call for a recount, particularly coming on the heels of a fiercely contested and sharply partisan election, would likely be cheered by Democrats but denounced by Republicans eager to focus on governing.

A request to the Trump transition team for comment was not immediately returned.

Trump’s campaign had long believed that his message of economic populism would resonate in the Rust Belt. He frequently campaigned in Pennsylvania and made a late push in both Wisconsin and Michigan, successfully turning out white working-class voters whom pollsters may have missed.

Many pre-election polls showed Clinton with slight leads. While advocating for the recounts, Halderman writes that “the most likely explanation” for Trump’s surprise win “is that the polls were systematically wrong.”

The deadlines for petitioning for a recount in all three states are in the coming days, with Wisconsin’s on Friday. Green Party candidate Jill Stein announced a fundraising effort Wednesday to pay for such recounts.

The focal point of any possible electoral cyberattack presumably would have been electronic voting machines that, whether or not they are connected to the internet, could be infected with malware that could change vote totals. But many of those machines produce a paper record of the vote that could be checked to see if the vote tabulations are accurate.

Pennsylvania is considered one of the states most susceptible to hacking because 96 per cent of its voting machines have no paper trail. Wisconsin is far less vulnerable because it uses electronic machines with voter-verifiable paper trails in most counties. Michigan is considered the safest of the three because it uses paper ballots.

Officials in the three states confirmed that no recounts have been ordered. A spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department says it is not tallying the number of voting complaints to determine whether federal action is warranted.

Many election experts have called for routine post-election audits designed to boost public confidence in vote outcomes, by guarding against both tampering and natural vote-counting mistakes. These could involve spot-checks of the voting records and ballots, typically in randomly selected precincts, to make sure that votes were accurately recorded.

In many states, audits involve hand-counting the votes on paper ballots and comparing the results to the totals stored in the state’s electronic voting system. Such audits do sometimes turn up mistakes that reverse an election. That happened in Florida’s Palm Beach County in 2012, when a post-election audit determined that the “winners” in two city council races were actually losers.

Routine audits also make it possible to confirm the accuracy of elections without putting the onus on losing candidates to call for a recount. In states without regular audits, a candidate who questions the results gets “painted as a sore loser,” Pamela Smith, president of the non-profit Verified Voting, said in an interview earlier this year. “If you do a regular audit, you often don’t need a recount. It either shows the count was right or you find something.”

Any attempted hack to swing the results in three states would have been a massive and unprecedented undertaking. But electoral security was an issue that loomed large in many Americans’ minds this year as the Democratic National Committee and several Clinton staffers had their emails breached and later released. U.S. security officials believe that hack of email was orchestrated by Russian hackers.

Hamilton reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
Jill Stein's campaign to hold recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin receives grassroots support, having crowdfunded millions of dollars through private donations.