"The Stein recount effort is mobilizing concerned voters across Pennsylvania to request recounts in their precincts," Jill Stein's campaign said. | Getty Stein moves for Pennsylvania recount

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein is taking steps to initiate a recount in Pennsylvania, three days after filing for a recount in Wisconsin. Recount requests were filed Monday in more than 100 Pennsylvania precincts, according to her campaign.

"The Stein recount effort is mobilizing concerned voters across Pennsylvania to request recounts in their precincts," Stein campaign manager David Cobb said in a statement. "Additionally, the campaign filed a legal petition in state court today on behalf of 100 Pennsylvania voters to protect their right to substantively contest the election in Pennsylvania beyond the recounts being filed by voters at the precinct level. This petition will allow the campaign to pursue a full statewide recount in Pennsylvania if precinct-level recounts uncover any irregularities or tampering.”


Stein campaign lawyer Lawrence Otter announced Monday that he filed a lawsuit arguing for a statewide recount of the Nov. 8 presidential election results. The suit, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, argues that a recount is warranted based on "grave concerns" by the more than 100 petitioners involved in the lawsuit "about the integrity of electronic voting machines used in their districts."

To initiate a statewide recount through the courts, the Stein campaign must sufficiently prove that there was a strong probability of election fraud in Pennsylvania.

But with that high bar for the Stein campaign to meet, the campaign is also hoping to initiate a recount through another route, with Pennsylvania voters in every precinct submitting affidavits to their precinct clerks asking for recounts in their respective precincts. So far, the Stein campaign said, they had successfully gotten 100 precincts to make the requests — a fraction of the necessary 9,163 voting precincts.

Further complicating the effort, the Pennsylvania Department of State noted that some of the precincts are in counties that had finished certifying their election results, closing the five-day window for petitioning precincts to hold recounts.

"The Department of State is working to gather information from the 67 counties regarding their progress in certifying election returns. We’ve learned that many counties have completed their certification, thereby closing the 5-day window to petition at the county level for a recount," the Department of State said in a statement on Monday. “The Department of State is also providing guidance to the counties on the process for handling recount petitions. We are aware of petitions filed in Berks, Bucks, Centre, Montgomery, and Philadelphia. However, we are not aware of how many have been filed in each county. We have been working to gather that information from the counties. Because the Department is not the filing agency, we are relying on reports from the counties.”

Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Rob Gleason dismissed Stein's Pennsylvania effort as an act of desperation.

“Our General Counsel has reviewed the Election Contest and said it is totally and completely without any merit. It does not even allege any facts to support its wild claim that the ‘discontinuity’ of pre-election polls reported by the media showing that Hillary Clinton would win and the actual results could only have occurred through computer hacking originated by a foreign government," Gleason said. “This desperate act by Jill Stein and those supporting her is a sad commentary on the failure of some to accept the results of the will of the people as reflected by their votes.”

The Pennsylvania action follows Stein's initiation of the recount process in Wisconsin, where her campaign filed just before the state's 5 p.m. deadline Friday. Stein had promised supporters that if she raised enough money to pay for additional recounts, her campaign would also file for similar action in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Hillary Clinton's top campaign lawyer said Saturday that the Democratic nominee's campaign would participate in the Wisconsin recount initiated by Stein, and would follow a similar approach in Michigan and Pennsylvania if she pursued recounts in those states.

In Wisconsin, Trump’s margin of victory is just over 22,000 votes. And in Pennsylvania, it's even larger — roughly 71,000 votes.

In Michigan, Stein has hired former state Democratic Party chairman Mark Brewer and has until Wednesday to request a formal recount, which is estimated to cost nearly $800,000.

