Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is vowing to continue her fight for a Wisconsin election recount despite $3.5 million price tag.
The recount will start Thursday if Stein pays the fee by Tuesday.
Stein issued the following statement Tuesday morning:
“We stand by our commitment to verify that the vote in Wisconsin was accurate and secure and this exorbitant cost will not deter us. While this excessive fee places an undue burden on our efforts, we are committed to paying this cost in order to ensure that the voting in Wisconsin was accurate. It is another sign of a democracy in crisis that ordinary citizens must pay so steep a price in order to assure the validity of our votes. The grassroots demand for a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania will not be stopped, and we look forward to working with the Elections Commissions in Wisconsin and the other states to see this through. We will be alerting recount advocates that we must now raise an additional $2.4 million dollars to cover this new extraordinary burden in Wisconsin. In doing so, we are committed to ensuring that a secure vote should not come at such an unconscionable cost. As citizens in a democracy, it should be our right.”
Stein said in a lawsuit filed Monday that the 2016 presidential race was "subject to unprecedented cyberattacks" and lays out a scenario about how votes could be compromised.
She also argues in her lawsuit that seeking a hand recount in Wisconsin wouldn't be as time-consuming as feared, and that's the only way to ensure results of the election are accurate.
There is no evidence that Wisconsin voting machines were hacked.
Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn has been assigned the case.
