Is Jill Stein turning into Donald Trump?

Citing a sharp increase in "bogus absentee ballots" as compared to the last general election, Dr Jill Stein, 2016 presidential election candidate for the Green Party, requested a full recount in Wisconsin, claiming that the significant increase for such ballots could be attributed to a breach of the state's electronic voter base.

Just a slight problem for the Doctor and her supporters to consider: the internet. Wisconsin's Election Supervisor Ross Hein said on 8 November that "...to access the [election] equipment, you would have to actually get your hands on it," because the machines do not connect to the internet!

I wonder whether Stein would have made the same effort had the small margin of victory in Wisconsin for Republican candidate Donald Trump worked instead for the Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton (presuming of course that this is all being done with no bias and simply an exercise to confirm the integrity of the electoral machine, computer and human).

Jill Stein won about 1% of the vote in Wisconsin but there is no doubting her determination to force the recount, having raised and paid some $3.5m for it to happen. Overturning the election result, seen by most impartial observers as a near impossibility, would be of no gain to her or her cause and could only be to the detriment of Trump.

Stein said in a statement: "The recount doesn't benefit one candidate over another. It benefits all voters across the political spectrum. This is an essential first step to restore confidence in our elections and trust in our democracy."

Wisconsin started its recount on Thursday, 1 December and by 12.45pm local time on the 5th, six counties had completed the task and had deducted 20 votes from Trump's total and 20 votes from Clinton's because of mistakes due to human error.

Meanwhile, across Lake Michigan and in that state of the same name, Stein has succeeded in getting recounts started in two counties shortly after noon on 5 December. Five or six more will start on the morning of the 6th and the other counties in the state will follow later in the week, provided Trump's lawyers do not win in their bid to halt the count, the same morning.

In the Michigan case, Stein cited the number of under votes, that is blank ballots which did not declare a Presidential candidate, which she put at 84,000. The Detroit Free Press on 15 November, quoting unofficial results from the Election, said the figure was 87,810 who had refused to nominate one of the six candidates who had qualified "and chose to write an alternative".

The paper went on to say that this was down to the large number of people who were unhappy with both nominees for the White House – "Historically unpopular".

Trump does not get any sympathy from me – he is the one who started all this three weeks before the election. His comments went against one of the safest election systems of any country in the world, bringing even President Obama to come to its defence. Trump has been hoist with his own petard.