On the heels of a legal victory in Michigan over the weekend, the Green party presidential nominee, Jill Stein, continued her campaign to recount presidential ballots in key swing states at a press conference outside Trump Tower on Monday.

“We’re here today to stand up for a vote that is accurate, secure, fair and just, in which every vote counts,” Stein said. The 2016 candidate has raised more than $7m to fund recounts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, three states in which Donald Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton last month.

Stein’s appearance came just hours after her campaign announced a federal lawsuit in Pennsylvania to try and force a recount there. A previous state-level recount request by Stein’s campaign was denied after a judge ordered her campaign to post a $1m bond.

“It’s clear that the fix was in against a verified vote in the state of Pennsylvania,” Stein said, “so we are now moving to a federal court to ask the court to please stand up for our constitutional right to vote.”

On Sunday in Michigan, where Trump won by a razor-thin 11,000-vote margin, the federal judge Mark Goldsmith ruled that the state’s recount must begin Monday at noon. In front of the president-elect’s Midtown Manhattan high rise, Jonathan Abady, one of the attorneys spearheading Stein’s recount push, called the decision a “major victory” on Monday.

Stein added that Goldsmith “affirmed in this decision that this recount advances our fundamental right to vote, election fairness and accuracy”.

During the campaign, Trump warned that the election would be rigged, and in his final debate against Clinton, he said that he might not accept the outcome of the election and would “look at it at the time”.

But since being named the victor, Trump’s tone has shifted and he has accused Stein of “attempting to sow doubts regarding the legitimacy of the presidential election” with her unprecedented multi-state recount effort – even as he himself has alleged that widespread voter fraud may have plagued the election. Trump and his legal team have been fighting Stein’s recount effort.

“We are here to urge Donald Trump that there is nothing to be afraid of,” Stein said Monday. “If you believe in democracy, if you believe in the credibility of your victory, put down your guards.”

Stein’s recount campaign has been based on a variety of accusations mostly tied to the idea that foreign actors may have attempted to turn the election through fraud and electronic hacking. So far, although many experts have expressed concerns over the vulnerability of US voting operations, no substantive, direct proof of widespread fraud has been discovered.

The most specific claim made by Stein on Monday involved what her campaign described as a preponderance of so-called undervoting in predominantly black Michigan precincts, which vote heavily Democratic. An unusual number of ballots there, according to Stein, were missing votes for president, with votes cast for candidates for other offices.

“It’s important that a miscount or a dismissal of votes in communities of color not be contributing to an erroneous outcome,” Stein said.