Americans who did not support Donald Trump for president are in a very giving mood this Thanksgiving.
In just 24 hours, the Green Party has raised $4 million of their $4.5 million dollar goal to demand the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin double check the integrity of their votes.
That’s after a few scientists came forward questioning whether the Russians could have hacked voting equipment in three states where Hillary Clinton was heavily favored to win.
“A few years ago, I might have said that sounds like science fiction, but 2016 has seen unprecedented cyberattacks aimed at interfering with the election,” said J. Alex Halderman, professor of computer science at the University of Michigan. “This summer, attackers broke into the email system of the Democratic National Committee and, separately, into the email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, and leaked private messages. Attackers infiltrated the voter registration systems of two states, Illinois and Arizona, and stole voter data. And there’s evidence that hackers attempted to breach election offices in several other states.”
In each of these cases, a variety of federal agencies publicly confirmed that senior officials in the Russian government commissioned these attacks. Russia has sophisticated cyber-offensive capabilities, and in 2014 attackers sabotaged Ukraine’s vote-counting infrastructure in an effort to cause the wrong winner to be announced.
Halderman says states have been warned for years that they risk a cyber-attack in their electronic voting equipment. While there is no way of knowing if hackers were successful in altering votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, he argues “why wouldn’t we verify to make sure?”
Clinton now leads Trump in the national popular vote by over two million votes.
The deadlines to file for a recount are Friday in Wisconsin, Monday in Pennsylvania and Wednesday in Michigan.
The Green Party has now raised more cash in 24 hours for this legal effort than they did during the entire campaign.