Sign Petition! Jill Stein raises $2.5 million for ballot recounts

Politicians across the country are calling for ballot recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in light of reports of potential voting machine manipulation.

And the seemingly overzealous prospect became tangible early Thursday as Green Party candidate Jill Stein announced that her campaign had raised the $2.5 million necessary to file for audits in the three Rust Belt states.

Stein’s camp launched the “#RECOUNT2016” fundraiser Wednesday, as Hillary Clinton's popular vote lead against Donald Trump surpassed 2 million. Less than 24 hours later, the Green Party nominee’s fundraiser had smashed the monetary glass ceiling.

“These recounts are part of an election integrity movement to attempt to shine a light on just how untrustworthy the U.S. election system is,” Stein said in a statement announcing the initiative.

The Green Party nominee’s successful fund-raiser comes a week after a prominent group of election lawyers and computer scientists informed the Hillary Clinton campaign that they had found something fishy about voter turnouts in the three hotly contested swing states.

For instance, Clinton’s vote count in Wisconsin precincts that used electronic machines was down 7% as compared to counties that relied on paper ballots. The group has not presented any tangible evidence for voting machine fraud, but said the suspicious findings are enough for an independent review.

The report prompted a massive social media response, and over 180,000 people had signed an

“audit the vote” petition by early Thursday.

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