Clinton campaign to take part in state election recounts

Hillary Clinton's election lawyer Marc Elias announced on Saturday that the campaign would participate the recount of votes in Wisconsin state although it had found no evidence of the voting technology being manipulated in Trump's favour.

Eliad said in a post on Medium.com that the campaign would also join recounts in the closely contested states of Michigan and Pennsylvania if they are arranged, news agency AFP reported.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein requested for a recount of votes in the state of Wisconsin.She has also declared her intention to file for recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

US President-elect Donald trump won the three states by just over a 100,000 votes pushing him above the 270 votes he needed to win in the Electoral College.

Elias said the campaign had not decided to seek a recount becuase they found no irregularity or evidence of attempts to change the voting technology.

"But now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides," he added, reported AFP.

"If Jill Stein follows through as she has promised and pursues recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, we will take the same approach in those states as well," Elias said.

Experts say that there is no chance of overturning the result. However, the move could raise the questions over Trump's legitimate win in the elections again. 

Clinton lost by around 20,000 votes in Wisconsin, 70,000 votes in Pennsylvania and 10,000 votes in Michigan. She, however, leads the popular vote at two million.

"But regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself," Elias said.

"While that effort has not, in our view, resulted in evidence of manipulation of results, now that a recount is underway, we believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported."

Stein said that the 'reported hacks into voter and party databases and individual email accounts' have caused suspicion over the legitimacy of election results among Americans.

"These concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified," she said. "We deserve elections we can trust."

(With inputs from AFP)