[JURIST] President-elect Donald Trump [official website] and his supporters filed legal challenges in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin [complaints] last week, in an effort to prevent recounts in those three states. Green Party candidate Jill Stein [official websites] initiated the controversial recount efforts last month. On Thursday Trump’s lawyers filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania challenging the recount, stating in the complaint that “[d]espite being no more than a blip on the electoral radar, Stein has now commandeered Pennsylvania’s electoral process, with an eye toward doing the same to the Electoral College.” The same day, the Great America PAC, the Stop Hillary PAC and others filed a lawsuit in Wisconsin against the Elections Commission [official websites], seeking to halt a recount in that state. On Friday, a federal judge in the Western District of Wisconsin [official website] denied the motion [Tucson report] to halt the recount, but permitted the underlying lawsuit to proceed. At the same time, Trump, and Michigan’s attorney general Bill Schuette, filed separate lawsuits in the Michigan Court of Appeals [official websites] in an attempt to block the recount effort there, alleging that such dilatory efforts might result in Michigan’s electoral college votes not being counted.

Led by its presidential nominee Jill Stein, the Green Party filed suits for recounts late last month. Earlier this week, a federal judge ruled [JURIST report] that a Wisconsin recount can go forward, but denied that the recounts be done by hand. For a recount to be done by hand, the requesting candidate must provide “clear and convincing evidence” that the recounting machines will produce an incorrect result and that there is a “substantial probability” that recounting by hand will produce a more correct result. The Wisconsin recount began [JS report] Thursday, with other recounts [JURIST report] set to begin soon. Shortly thereafter the Clinton campaign came out in favor [JURIST report] of the recount efforts, but has thus far provided only minimal assistance to the cause. The recount motions come as an inversion of the pre-election status quo where President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on the charge of a rigged vote and refused to commit [Washington Post report] to the election results before he saw them.