Local Leaders Weigh In On Pennsylvania Recount Efforts
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- It's a costly and controversial initiative targeting not "who" won the popular vote, but "how" those votes were tallied. Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein wants experts to do forensic examinations of voting machines in precincts across the commonwealth.
"This is about responding to the American voters who are standing up and saying we deserve an election system that we can trust and that is accurate, that is secure against hacking, against human error, against machine error and that in which the votes are being counted, because right now, it's not clear that all the votes are being counted," Stein said.
The logistic and financial burdens are challenging in Pennsylvania: petitions, notarizations, and a hefty price tag.
Stein's lawyers will file for an emergency federal court order on Monday. They want the whole process declared unconstitutional.
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"We need to be absolutely 100 percent sure that there was no interference with the election in Pennsylvania, no hacking, no malware, nothing like that at all, so we're going to ask the federal court, let us examine those voting machines, let us make sure that this vote had integrity because that is the heart of our our democracy," said Ilann Maazel, lead for Stein's Pennsylvania recount effort.
The chairman of the Republican Committee in Allegheny County calls the move a waste of time.
"Even the Pennsylvania Secretary of State has not heard anything regarding tampering of the voting machines, none of this. It's just an effort, we think, to delay past the Dec. 13th deadline and it's not going anywhere," D. Raja said.