Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has initiated recount efforts in three states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — where Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a combined margin of 103,519 votes. (A fourth, partial recount is underway in Nevada, by independent presidential candidate Roque De La Fuente).

Though considered an "extreme long shot" by the New York Times, Stein's campaign raised her initial goal of $7 million — twice as much as she raised in her failed campaign bid — in just a matter of days. Clinton's campaign has cooperated with the effort.

However, Stein is not pursuing the recount to curry favor among Clintonites. Instead, her mission, she says, is to ensure voter integrity. Though there is no evidence of hacking or machine tampering, cyber security expert J. Alex Halderman suggested it was possible. Stein spoke to Cosmopolitan.com about the latest in the recount effort, how she plans to spend any excess in fundraising, and what's next.

How much have you used up of the money that you’ve raised, and what are you planning to do with the remaining funds, if any?

In order to handle the allegations that are being incurred right now from the state, from the boards of election, from the lawyers, from the efforts to publicize the campaign, and from the volunteer campaigns on the ground — which require a lot of support and management for the volunteers — we will require $9.5 million, and that does not include, for example, the $1 million that Pennsylvania wanted to add to the cost. Those could go up quite a bit depending on other actions of the state. What we’ve raised total was $7.1 million when I last looked, and I believe that was yesterday.

Assuming that it ends up not costing as much as you anticipate, if you do have leftover funds, how will they be used and how transparent will that process be in terms of what donors want?

So, the process will be completely transparent, and I should mention that the money is all raised and deposited into a dedicated and segregated account. The donor list, by the way, will be made public by the Federal Election Commission and that will happen this week. The rules for donations are basically the same rules that we used to fundraise with as a political campaign: that is a maximum donation of $2,700. However, we know that the average donation is approximately $47 or $48, and that there have been over 150,000 donors.

If, by some miracle, there was money leftover, that money would be appropriated according to FEC guidelines, and the options, as I understand it, would be refunding the money or making a decision as to how to continue supporting election integrity efforts that can carry on the work of this campaign. And if that were to happen, what we would be actually very excited about doing is having every contributor vote on a set of options for exactly how that money would be spent, so that it could be a participatory democratic process whereby the donors decide, and we would use a voting system that we think should be used all the time — you rank your choices, and that way, we could come up with one or more options for exactly how those funds will be spent according to the wishes of the donors.

Tell me about the decision to pursue action in federal court instead of paying out the $1 million bond to the state of Pennsylvania.

Well, the problem was not that it was too expensive, but that it was a dead-end course of action. If you want to verify vote in Pennsylvania, it requires three voters to each go to a notary public and get a statement notarized. So three people have to do this in each precinct and there are 9,000 precincts, so if you want to do a full recount, you have to get 27,000 people to notarize legal statements and then get them filed with the precinct elections administration. So it’s extremely complicated and extremely labor-intensive and very, shall we say, not user-friendly to everyday people who want to ensure that they have verified vote. Then there’s the other issue of the political entrenched court system where they put the recount campaign in an impossible situation by calling for a court date that would require evidence about the problems with the voting system before we would have the evidence. They advanced the date to a time that would make to impossible to actually present a case.

What are the next steps in each of the three states, and what are you expecting to happen?

We have nine lawsuits that are active right now in which these, basically, our right to a secure and fair vote is being fought out. In Wisconsin, we are moving ahead. Out of 72 different counties, all but about 10 are performing that hand-count, which is really a tribute I think to the court system and to the local elections people. We’re still hoping that the remaining 10 or so counties that are not doing a hand-count will come around.

Then in Michigan, we just had this decision after midnight last night — we were all kind of flabbergasted — this incredibly inspired decision by a judge in Michigan who said that the hand-count should proceed, quickly. The recount was set to start on Friday until the Trump lot began to create all sorts of obstructions, which has delayed the process. However, Donald Trump and his cronies have filed a whole bunch of legalistic land mines that we have to now basically deal with and there are court cases that are going forward now. [Michigan] Attorney General [Bill Schuette], who is a political crony of Donald Trump himself, has filed a lawsuit that is attempting to stop the case from going forward, and I believe that is the next legal hurdle in Michigan.

And in Pennsylvania, we have basically a dead end. So we have now filed in federal court for the recount to go forward in order to ensure the constitutional right to vote is protected in Pennsylvania.

What is your response to those who say that it was your fault that Trump got elected, and have you faced any backlash for your campaign?

So a lot of people are looking for someone to blame the election outcome on. But if you look at the numbers, here’s what you find: Exit polls tell us very clearly that Green voters — 61 percent of Green voters would not vote for Donald Trump or for Hillary Clinton. They would only vote Green, so these were not votes that were taken away. It’s a myth that Green votes are taken away from Hillary Clinton or that they would automatically go to Democrats. There were many Trump supporters who were going to support Bernie Sanders. So there is surprising crossover here. The American voting public is complex. Simple rules don’t apply.

We have a democracy which is in trouble. A lot of people didn’t like their choices here. It was the most disliked and untrusted set of candidates in our history. And many people were interested in other choices.

What have you and Hillary Clinton discussed about the recount, if anything?

Nothing. We have had zero contact. Our lawyers have communicated with each other, so that we will not interfere and not get in each other’s way. There has otherwise been zero contact between our campaigns.

You’ve said before that both candidates were not your candidate, but do you believe they are equally unfavorable, and do you think that the Green Party will have the same struggles under Trump that they would under Clinton?

The struggles are different, but in my view, it’s a sinking ship under Democrats and under Republicans. For example, you know, it’s a choice between coal — Trump supports — or fracking — which Clinton supports. They’re both a dead end for the environment. In my view, this has been a bipartisan process that has essentially thrown everyday working people under the bus. Our jobs are going overseas, our wages are declining, a generation is locked in debt, over half of our discretionary budget is being spent on wars that are making us less secure, not more secure, so — and the climate is in meltdown, and Barack Obama’s policy and the policy of two Democratic Houses of Congress with all of the above, which has been an absolute disaster.

We’re not getting out of here alive under a Democratic or Republican leadership. That’s why I think it’s very important for us to stand up for a democracy that serves us. In order to do that, we have to start with a voting system that counts in which we the voters can have confidence that our votes are going to be counted, and, number two, that we need to move on from there and create a voting system in which we can vote our values, not our fears, and, number three, we need to open up our debates so that our voters can actually be informed and empowered to make real decisions because real choices were locked out of this election, and that’s an incredible disservice to voters.

There was a spike in hate crimes and racially charged incidents in the aftermath of Trump’s election. Do you think that that would have increased after Clinton’s win, if she had won?

It’s hard to know because forces or racism and immigrant-bashing had really been released during the election. And would you have seen the frustration of those forces on account of Trump’s loss? You know, I don’t know. What I know is that it’s very important that we stand up with principled leadership on behalf of our communities who are at risk — the immigrant, the Muslim, the Latino, the LGBTQ community, women. We need to stand up not only in the streets but also in the halls of power, and we need to ensure that we’re moving forward. If you look at the policies of Hillary Clinton, unfortunately — well, and Bill Clinton as well that Hillary supported — this opened the floodgates to mass incarceration. It created the militarization of the border and the recruitment of local police into the anti-immigrant policies.

It’s been a bipartisan problem that frontline communities are in the target areas and have already been in the target areas, although it’s more explicit under Donald Trump. It is absolutely unconscionable how both parties have contributed to this very difficult situation that we’re in right now, and it underscores that we need principled and new leadership going forward.

Will you run for office again?

I describe myself as a "mother on fire" and I am currently practicing political medicine because it’s the mother of all illnesses. As a medical doctor, that’s how I come to be here. My concern when I get up out of bed in the morning is, are my kids going to make it? And I know my kids aren’t going to make it unless all kids are going to make it because right now we’re in a situation where they’re not, where they’re looking at this economy, which is a disaster zone for a generation locked in debt that doesn’t have the jobs that enable them to even have a place to live, let alone start their own family. We have really a human rights disaster being lived out right now by an entire generation of young people. If you look at the catastrophe of the climate, it is only accelerating under Democrats as well as under Republicans.

I don’t have a crystal ball. I just know that I’m here and I’m committed as long as I’m breathing. Mothers fight for their kids, and that’s what I’m doing.

Your recount has generated more than your campaign did. How did that make you feel?

Oh, I think it’s great. I think it’s actually nothing short of miraculous that we’ve been able to stand up and fill the void of leadership now, and it’s full speed ahead. Hopefully, we’ll come out of this not only with a vote count that we can trust and reforms to that voting system, but reforms to the election system, so that we don’t have to have another election where people are voting against the candidate they’re most afraid of.

Follow Prachi on Twitter.

Prachi Gupta Prachi Gupta is an award-winning journalist based in New York.

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