Rendell Dismisses Recount Effort But Blames Trump For Sewing Mistrust
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell dismissed efforts by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to push for recounts in three states, including Pennsylvania, that she hopes would change the outcome of the presidential election, but insisted Donald Trump is contributing to the disorder following the vote by insisting millions participated illegally.
Rendell, during a discussion with Rich Zeoli on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, said nothing suspicious occurred on election day and Trump's baseless suggestion otherwise undermines his credibility as President-elect.
"Pedro Cortez, who is Secretary of State, who was my Secretary of State when I was Governor said there is no evidence of any fraud and he works for a Democratic Governor. I think it's a little bit of a waste of time, but understand that President-elect Trump brings a lot of this on himself. He says, without one iota's worth of evidence that there were millions of illegal votes cast in this election and that opens up the door for someone like the Inquirer to say, well if Trump says there were millions of illegal votes cast and Jill Stein says that, why don't we just recount? It's silly. Donald Trump should not be saying that because there's not any evidence that there was one illegal vote cast in this election."
He would like both major candidates to reject the recount effort and for Trump to stop hinting that voters should not trust the electoral process.
"We're only talking about 10,000 votes in Michigan, 22,000 votes in Wisconsin and 70,000 votes in Pennsylvania. That's 100,000 votes. Donald said there were millions, plural, millions of illegal votes cast...Hillary Clinton should say this is a waste of time. Donald Trump should retract his statement that there were millions of illegal votes cast."
Rendell pointed out that even if Stein's effort was a success, not enough votes would be changed to make a difference in the final outcome.
"The recount in a presidential election that changed the most votes was the Gore recount of the Gore-Bush election in Florida and it changed 1200 votes, not enough to give Gore Florida, but enough to shorten the margin. No one ever has had a recount anything close to 70,000 votes, which is Pennsylvania."