Update 2x (Michigan): 3-hour hearing in federal court today ended with US District Judge Mark Goldsmith saying shortly after 4 pm he would soon issue a written decision. Stein is asking the court to order the recount to start immediately, i.e., Mon. morning — instead of waiting until Wed as MI’s Election Director plans to do. Though not necessarily relevant to the narrower question of when a recount should start, the hearing did get into arguments about whether MI's voting machines could have been hacked, and whether any such hacking could have affected the outcome. And interesting, Stein’s attorneys did explicitly raise the possibility that the actual election result might change.
A bit more color of the hearing is available in this Detroit Free Press story.
Late Sunday evening, MI Attorney General Bill Schuette also made a filing in federal court in relation to Stein's suit, arguing Stein is not entitled to a recount under the federal Constitution.
He is also arguing that the court should require Stein to post a multi-million dollar bond to cover the public cost of the recount. I guess Schuette is looking to pull a PA move on Stein — bankrupting her recount effort.
Also, both the AG and Trump attorneys filed motions in the MI Supreme Court to stop the recount.
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Update 1x: Federal district court in recess until 12:30pm when focus will turn to arguments regarding vulnerability of hacking and malicious software that could effect vote count.
During 10:30am hearing, Judge Goldsmith asked Mark Brewer (Stein attorney) whether or not recount could be done by Dec. 13th if recount starts on Wednesday. MB said he believes so… meaning likely judge will let recount begin on Wed as scheduled if he lets it proceed.
And that will be focus for 12:30pm session ...
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Sunday roundup of recount news from WI, MI and PA … with big news coming late Sunday morning …
Michigan: After Board of State Canvassers deadlocked over Trump's objection, meaning recount could move forward, a Federal judge scheduled a hearing for today (Sunday!) at 10:30am on Stein’s objection that recount could only proceed starting on Wed. MI Election Director Chris Thomas said the 2-day delay is required by state law. Stein argues that the delay is “unreasonable and violates equal protection and due process.” Recount attention will likely focus on over 80,000 undervotes in MI where people votes all the down ticket races but allegedly skipped voting for the Presidential election. As Brainwrap noted in an earlier diary, this undervote rate is about 2x that of the 4 previous elections in MI. It’s possible, but certainly worthy of careful examination since total margin in MI stands at only 10,704 votes.
Pennsylvania: PA has been main focus of recount action over past 48 hours. Once again the media were derelict in their duty to accurately report the news about Jill Stein discontinuing her pursuit of a statewide recount. A state lawsuit filed by 10 PA citizens joined by Stein was withdraw when the State judge ruled that they needed to post a $1 million bond in order for case to proceed. Stein announced intention to file a suit in federal court — where she will argue the state is placing unconstitutional burdens on ability of citizens to get a recount and verify integrity of their votes. Stein expected to file federal lawsuit on Monday.
Wisconsin: Still not clear what current vote totals are for WI because the spreadsheet published by the State’s Election Commission is still missing Milwaukee’s totals for absentee ballots. Thus far, changes reported by counties have amounted to few hundred votes.
One question: Are recount observers looking for (and reporting) evidence of broken voting machine seals in other counties in addition to St. Croix? This would seem to be something valuable to document (with pics).