Detroit Free Press Staff and News Services

Michigan update: Friday evening, the Michigan Supreme Court in a 3-2 split rejected Green Party candidate Jill Stein's appeal that sought to continue a recount of the presidential election, concluding she had no standing to seek a recount because she wasn't an aggrieved candidate. Read more here.

Five states are contending with requests for recounts of ballots cast in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is behind recount efforts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, states where Republican Donald Trump won narrowly over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In Nevada, a partial recount of the race was requested by independent presidential candidate Roque De La Fuente. Clinton won in that state.

And a motion was filed Tuesday in central Florida by three voters who say that the election in Florida, which went to Trump, was marred because of hacking, malfunctioning voting machines and other problems.

Here's where each state stands Thursday.

Wisconsin

The recount is more than 70% complete in Wisconsin, and Clinton has gained just 82 votes on Trump, who won the state by more than 22,000 votes.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission reported Wednesday that 34 of 72 counties and the city of Milwaukee had completed their work and that the others are on track to finish by next week's deadline. More than 2.1 million votes out of the nearly 3 million cast have been recounted.

The recount is on schedule to finish by the Monday deadline for local officials and the Tuesday deadline for the state, according to the state commission and Milwaukee Election Commission executive director Neil Albrecht. Some of the state's biggest counties, including Dane and Brown, are still counting by hand or machine, however.

Stein, whose campaign paid $3.5 million to ensure Wisconsin did a recount, has gained only 60 votes. That works out to more than $58,000 for each vote that Stein has gained in the recount up to now.

Also, a federal lawsuit was filed late last week by a Trump voter and two super PACs seeking to stop the recount. The judge rejected a request to halt the recount while the lawsuit is pending and scheduled a hearing for Friday.

Michigan

The Michigan presidential recount that involved about 34 counties is on hold and may not be completed after a federal judge's ruling Wednesday.

In his eight-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith said "there is no basis" for him to ignore a state court ruling that said the recount should never had started. He was referring to the Michigan Court of Appeals 3-0 ruling, which said that Stein, who requested the recount, never had a shot at winning with her fourth-place finish and 1% of the vote, and therefore was not an aggrieved candidate under Michigan law.

Goldsmith's ruling also bolstered some arguments that were repeatedly made by the Michigan Republican Party that there was never any evidence that hacking or fraud occurred at the polls, and that Michigan's voting system is so secure that not even the "Gremlins, Martians or Russian hackers" could tamper with it. That argument appeared to carry some weight with the judge.

The state elections board said the recount would stop after Goldsmith's decision. Trump won Michigan by about 10,700 votes over Clinton. More than 20 counties so far were recounting ballots, and more were poised to start Thursday. Roughly 4.8 million ballots were cast.

One county — Ingham — had finished its recount of more than 134,000 ballots Wednesday. As a result, President-elect Trump gained 73 votes, while Hillary Clinton gained 138. Green Party candidate Stein lost two votes.

Stein's recount request also questioned 75,000 ballots, on which Michigan voters did not vote for anyone for president. This was almost double the amount of Michigan ballots with no presidential votes in 2012, which raised suspicions, Stein's lawyers said.

"We are deeply disappointed in Judge Goldsmith's ruling today, which gives deference to partisan state judges in Michigan who are attempting to block the state's recount simply because of the person who made the request, without regard for the integrity of Michigan's electoral system," Stein's lawyers, Hayley Horowitz and Jessica Clarke, said in a statement.

In a related matter, the state House could take up bills Thursday, including a proposal that would require statewide candidates, whose margin of loss in an election is more than 5%, to pick up the entire cost of a recount.

According to the Secretary of State, it is expected that Stein will end up paying for each precinct that was recounted at a cost of $125 per precinct. Under current state law, she paid $973,750 before the recount started. The fee for precincts that were not or could not be recounted will be refunded to Stein.

An appeal of the state Court of Appeals ruling by Stein is still pending in the Michigan Supreme Court.

Pennsylvania

Green Party-backed lawyers continued to be in a holding pattern Wednesday after asking a federal judge Monday to order a recount of the state’s Nov. 8 presidential election result. Stein's request for a recount must wait at least until a federal court hearing on Friday, just four days before the Dec. 13 federal deadline for states to certify their election results.

A federal lawsuit filed in Philadelphia called for a recount and a forensic examination of the aging electronic voting machines used in most Pennsylvania counties, saying both are necessary to determine whether the election results were manipulated by hackers.

The lawsuit said Pennsylvania’s paperless voting machines make it a prime target for hacking, citing the election-season e-mail hacking of the Democratic National Committee and attempts to breach election systems in other states.

Tuesday, Pennsylvania election officials updated the state's vote count to show that Trump's lead over Clinton had shrunk to about 44,000 out of more than 6 million votes cast. That is still shy of Pennsylvania's 0.5 percent trigger for an automatic statewide recount. A state spokeswoman said 15 provisional ballots remained uncounted.

Nevada

A partial recount continued in Nevada at the request of independent presidential candidate Roque De La Fuente, who finished last with a fraction of 1% of the vote. He paid about $14,000 for the recount to provide what he called a counterbalance to the recounts sought by Stein.

Most of the 92 precincts being re-counted are in the Las Vegas area, with eight of the precincts in four other counties.

If the sample shows a discrepancy of at least 1% for De La Fuente or Clinton, a full recount will be launched in all 17 Nevada counties.

Clinton defeated Trump in Nevada by 27,202 votes, out of 1.1 million votes cast. Nevada Secretary of State spokeswoman Gail Anderson said the recount will be finished by the end of this week.

Florida

Three Central Florida voters have mounted an unlikely bid to overturn the presidential election in the Sunshine State.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in Leon Circuit Court, they assert that Clinton, not Trump, actually won Florida. The plaintiffs, who live in Osceola and Volusia counties, say the state’s official election results were off because of hacking, malfunctioning voting machines and other problems.

They're asking for a hand recount of every paper ballot in Florida, at the expense of defendants including President-elect Trump, Gov. Rick Scott and the 29 Republican presidential electors from Florida.

But even lawyers for the plaintiffs acknowledge time isn’t on their side. Clint Curtis, an Orlando attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the defendants may not respond by the time the Electoral College meets on Dec. 19.

Officially, Trump got more than 4.6 million votes in Florida, beating Clinton by more than 112,000 votes.

Tresa Baldas, Kathleen Gray and Paul Egan of the Detroit Free Press, Jason Stein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jeff Burlew of the Tallahassee Democrat and the Associated Press contributed to this report.