The official county-by county of Michigan is in, and
it shows President-elect Donald Trump did what he set out to do, picking off
the battleground prize and winning it by nearly 11,000 votes. Earlier counts
had the Republican ahead by about 13,000 votes. But in final county-by-county
votes posted by state election officials Wednesday, Trump's official lead
narrowed to 10,704, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Clinton picked up her biggest share of votes in the
canvass in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, gaining 565 votes. Trump won
with 47.59 per cent of the vote, compared to Clinton's 47.35 per cent of the
vote. The narrow win vindicates Trump's claims throughout the race that he could
compete in rust belt Democratic strongholds like Michigan. Trump made it his
mission, stressing trade and job losses to overseas competitors, to bring back
some of the 'Reagan Democrats' in Macomb County and other working class areas. Democrats
mostly dismissed the idea throughout the general election, although in the
final days of the campaign Clinton rushed to Grand Rapids and Detroit, and
dispatched President Obama to Ann Arbor in a futile effort to stave off the
upset.
With Michigan in his column, Trump won 306 electoral
votes, to Clinton's 232, a convincing electoral win. But Clinton has amassed a
2 million vote lead in the popular vote the second time since 2000 where the
Democrat got more votes but lost the White House anyway. Trump also seized two
other Democratic prizes by winning Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Green Party
presidential candidate Jill Stein is raising funds to call for a recount in the
three states.
She announced that she has raised the necessary $2 million
to pay for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania after experts said
it was possible that hackers had artificially lowered Hillary Clinton's counts
there. She had reached $3.5 million by Thursday. 'We deserve elections we can
trust,' said Stein's campaign, adding that the effort was not intended to help
Clinton.
Computer scientists including J. Alex Halderman, the
director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and
Society, have conducted an analysis of the vote. That vote showed that Clinton
performed 7 per cent worse in Wisconsin counties that have electronic voting
machines than in counties that relied on paper ballots that are logged with an
optical scanner.
The group have contacted high level Clinton staffers,
including campaign chair John Podesta and general counsel Marc Elias, and made
their case in a conference call, according to New York Magazine. The Clinton
camp hadn't provided comment about the activists' push to call for a recount of
the vote.
Although the scientists provide no evidence of a hack, they
note that computer vote tallying machines in closely contested states could be
susceptible to hacking in an election
that featured hacks of the Democratic National Committee and of Podesta's
private email account. U.S. government officials have said Russia was behind
the hacking of Democratic groups.
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