Michigan’s attorney general announced Friday he would file suit to stop a recount requested by Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein.
“Today I am filing suit to stop @DrJillStein’s frivolous, expensive recount request,” Bill Schuette, a Republican, wrote on Twitter.
The state’s top law enforcement official said that he had “filed an emergency motion with the Mich Supreme Court to bypass the Court of Appeals to ensure a timely process.”
Schuette’s office later put out a statement explaining the motion.
“Michigan voters rejected Stein’s candidacy by massive margins but her refusal to accept that state-verified result poses an expensive and risky threat to hard-working taxpayers and abuses the intent of Michigan law,” Schuette said. “We have asked the court to end the recount which Stein is pursuing in violation of Michigan laws that protect the integrity of our elections. It is inexcusable for Stein to put Michigan voters at risk of paying millions and potentially losing their voice in the Electoral College in the process.”
Stein had filed a request last week for a recount of Michigan’s vote in the 2016 election after a razor-thin margin made the state the last to be called. President-elect Donald Trump ended up winning Michigan’s 16 electoral votes by just 0.2 percentage points, or just under 10,000 votes out of over 5.5 million cast.
Stein defended her decision to request a recount in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — three traditionally blue swing states that proved critical to Trump’s upset victory — in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“What we have are predictors that if tampering took place, it would be most likely to be discovered in the three states where we are looking,” she said on “Anderson Cooper 360.” “Unless we actually look, we would never know,” she said.
“But without having the evidence, aren’t you actually contributing, perhaps unfairly, to that lack of confidence in the system itself?” Cooper asked Stein.
“What the voting technology experts tell us is that you cannot tell unless you’re actually counting paper votes,” she said. “And I don’t think the FBI has done that.”