Jill Stein Plays Us For Fools Again

Jill Stein managed to pull enough votes from Hillary Clinton and arguably allow Donald Trump to win Michigan and Wisconsin. The final totals are in in Michigan and Trump beat Clinton there by a little under 11,000 votes. Jill Stein won over 51,000 votes in that state. In Wisconsin, Trump's margin of victory was just over 27,000 votes and Stein received nearly 31,000. With a Trump presidency, there is a good chance that the US will withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement, making Stein's presidential run one of the greatest own-goals in environmental and political history. So, having essentially played the 2016 version of Ralph Nader, Stein is now raising money to contest the election results in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. This is based on a study by some cyber experts who pointed out that counties with electronic voting machines showed about a 7% drop off in votes for Clinton compared to counties that used optical scanners and similar methods that actually produce a paper trail. Nate Silver pretty much debunked that analysis but it is certainly Stein's prerogative to challenge the vote totals if she wishes. Realistically, her challenge will accomplish nothing and is a total waste of time and money because, even if the voting machines were hacked, it would be almost impossible to prove it.

Originally, Stein had asked to raise $2.5 million in order to challenge the results in those three states. She managed to raise that money and more in very short order. But, as Josh Marshall points out, once the original threshold had been reached, Stein raised the goal to $4.5 million and then to $7 million. With these donations, Stein is adding to her own voter/donor list and is probably raising far more money than the challenges will actually cost. In fact, it looks like the Stein campaign will keep any residual monies and use them "for election integrity efforts and to promote systemic voting system reform", although that has not yet been confirmed.

Stein has already played many environmentalists and progressives for fools in this campaign and, in doing so, probably set back the US and global environmental movement back for years and perhaps provided millions of creatures on this planet with a death sentence as global warming remains unaddressed. It looks like she is continuing to play us for fools with this ill-fated election challenge that will, once again, probably only benefit Jill Stein.