After reaching her online fundraising goal, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has formally submitted a request for a recount of the votes cast in Wisconsin in the 2016 presidential election, NBC News reported on Friday.
The state will move forward with a statewide recount next week, according to officials.
Wisconsin officially accepted Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein’s petition for a statewide recount of votes for President of the United States. The recount is expected to begin late next week.
“The Commission is preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes for President of the United States, as requested by these candidates,” Wisconsin Election Commission’s Administrator Michael Haas said in a statement to NBC News.
Though Stein is the one making the request, the move is largely seen as an attempt for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to challenge the results of the election that handed the presidency to Republican Donald Trump.
Stein is also planning to challenge the votes in Pennsylvania and Michigan, the latter of which is still considered too close by some news networks.
Trump shocked pollsters by winning all three states by margins of less that 11,600 in Michigan, 27,200 in Wisconsin and 68,000 in Pennsylvania.
A group of prominent scientists and lawyers has claimed it’s found evidence of hacking or manipulation of the vote in the three states that may have influenced the results of the 2016 presidential election.
“After a divisive and painful presidential race, in which foreign agents hacked into party databases, private email servers and voter databases in certain states, many Americans are wondering if our election results are reliable,” Stein said in a statement on her campaign website Wednesday. “That’s why the unexpected results of the election and reported anomalies need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified. We deserve elections we can trust.”
A New York Magazine article published on Tuesday said a group led by voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society director J. Alex Halderman called on Clinton to file for a recount in those states. Overturning the results in all three states would give Clinton an electoral college win and the presidency — but they say she is “running out of time.”
The group contends that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines, compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots, according to the magazine. They say that could have cost Clinton 30,000 votes in the state, which she lost by just over 27,000 votes.