Jill Stein is so indignant at the voting process in Wisconsin she wants them to recount the ballots.
The Green Party presidential candidate isn’t doing this for herself. She finished fourth in the balloting there. No, she is doing it apparently on behalf of Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost the state to Donald Trump by about 25,000 votes.
Here’s the problem with Stein’s quest, as I see it: Clinton ain’t on board, at least not publicly.
Stein managed to raise about $5 million to pay for the recount. She figures there’s sufficient irregularities in the process that it could turn the state toward Clinton. Flipping Wisconsin’s electoral votes, a highly unlikely event, won’t reverse the election.
This is exercise isn’t going to change the outcome.
Please — please! — do not misconstrue my own feelings here. I wish there was ample evidence of vote-tampering and “hacking,” as Stein has alleged. There isn’t. I also wish the outcome had turned out differently. It didn’t.
We’ve got Donald Trump getting ready to become the next president of the United States. Heaven help us.
As for Stein’s quest to reverse one state’s result — which, if successful, could produce recounts in at least two other battleground states, she is mounting the mother of futile challenges.
It strikes me as odd that she is proceeding without any public show of support from the candidate who continues to roll up a significant popular vote margin over the “winner.”
Why is that? My strong hunch is that Hillary knows as well that it’s a futile endeavor. As Stein herself as acknowledged, she has no “smoking gun.”
So … what’s the point?