clinton – Houghton STAR

Jill Stein, candidate for the Green Party’s failed bid for the White House, has filed for a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. According to the Associated Press (AP), Stein raised $7 million toward the effort, twice what she garnered for her campaign.

The AP reported that Stein alleged possible tampering with electronic voting machines in the three states. This claim which was backed by J Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, according to BBC.

The White House refuted any possibility of tampering with the election results. A senior official in the Obama administration stated to Politico, “We stand behind our election results, which accurately reflect the will of the American people.” The Clinton campaign also acknowledged a lack of evidence to support Stein’s allegations. Marc Elias, general counsel of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, said he found no “actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology,” Politico reported. Nonetheless, observers from the Clinton campaign will be present at recounts in Michigan, according to BBC.

President-elect Donald Trump countered the recount filings with allegations of his own via Twitter. “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions who voted illegally,” he tweeted on Monday. Also on Monday, Trump clarified in another tweet that he was referring to “serious voter fraud” in Virginia, California, and New Hampshire. NBC News reported that no evidence has been found to support Trump’s claim.

California Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, responded with a tweet of his own, saying, “It appears that Mr. Trump is troubled by the fact that a growing majority of Americans did not vote for him. His unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in California and elsewhere are absurd. His reckless tweets are inappropriate and unbecoming of a President-elect,” NBC News reported. Clinton won the popular vote by about 2 million votes, according to NBC News.

Also on Monday, Stein filed a suit against the Wisconsin Elections Committee. The Committee refused to require each county to conduct a recount; if Stein’s loses her suit, she will have to petition each of Wisconsin’s 80+ counties to recount votes.

A Pennsylvania recount will require Stein to provide evidence of probable vote manipulation, which the Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes says there is “absolutely no evidence” of, according to the Philadelphia Media Network.

The AP reported that while it is highly unlikely a recount will change the election outcome, the drive for funds will continue to push Stein onto the national stage. After the recount matter is settled, any leftover funds will be funneled into the Green Party for “election integrity efforts and to promote voting system reform,” Stein said. Stein also wrote on her website, “These recounts are part of an election integrity movement to attempt to shine a light on just how untrustworthy the US election system is.”

Trump denounced the recount efforts as a “scam,” and accused the Green Party of attempting to “fill up their coffers,” according to BBC. BBC also reported that Trump accused Clinton of reneging on her concession to Trump late on November 8.

Federal Government Shuts Down

On September 30 this week, at the stroke of midnight, the federal government shut down.

This circumstance is not new to American history. The United States has gone through many partial and full government shutdowns, the most recent occasion taking place in 1995-1996 when Newt Gingrich was speaker of the House and President Clinton was in office. This latest incident, however, involved not only a disagreement between Republicans and Democrats on how to best fund the government, but revealed a growing rift within the GOP as well.

In short, Congress was supposed to approve a budget by 11:59 p.m. on September 30, but failed to do so. This was because Congress could not agree on appropriations bills required. In fact, congressional leaders had seen this trouble coming for a few weeks. As time was beginning to run out, House Republicans proposed a temporary budget plan (what is called a “stopgap measure”) that would give them more time to create a full one. However this plan was created to appeal directly to the hardliners of the party and their conservative base by calling for the defunding of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also called Obamacare), the new healthcare plan that was due to take place on October 1, both in exchange for keeping the government running for a few more months. Democrats were overwhelmingly opposed to defunding ACA, as this is President Obama’s keystone legislation, and refused to pass the stopgap measure unless this was stripped from it. In the end, the debate continued and both the House and the Senate voted several more times, but nothing was passed and no agreement was ever reached. The government thus shut down after the due date on October 1.

So what does a government shutdown actually mean? It means that although not all government functions will cease to operate, there will be significant cuts and furloughs across all federal agencies. In sum, according to the Washington Post, an estimated 800,000 federal workers will be furloughed without pay and almost every agency from the Education Department to the FDA will be reduced in some way. National parks, Smithsonian museums, and national monuments will also be closed. Meanwhile, various other government programs, such as the WIC program, will be running on reserve funding, until the government can resolve the budget issue.

The longest that the US has experienced a government shutdown has been three weeks. In normal circumstances, the party that is undergoing the most fallout and political pressure as a result of the shutdown will begin to offer concessions. Many speculate, however, that the high level of partisanship and congressional gridlock experienced in D.C. these past few years (and recent weeks) will protract negotiations. Neither side seems willing to budge and, meanwhile, Republicans seem to be caught in a moment of disunity between the more conservative members of the party and the more moderate members which should add an extra complexity to the negotiations.

Of course, not all federal functions have disappeared. Functions that relate to the well-being of citizens and the security of the country are still being allowed to continue. For example, air traffic controllers will continue working, Social Security checks will continue to be delivered to the elderly, veterans’ hospitals will remain open, and operations like border patrol will remain in place.

Americans on the whole do not approve of the shutdown, with most placing the majority of the blame at the Republicans’ feet. Whether this will be enough to galvanize political leaders to come to a compromise, however, is anyone’s guess.