Experts, activists urge Hillary Clinton to challenge election results

A group of experts and activists is urging Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to challenge the election results in three states, New York Magazine reported Tuesday.

The group of election lawyers and computer scientists says Clinton should call for a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. They claim election results in those states could have been manipulated or hacked.

The group includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society.

The activists had a conference call last Thursday with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to discuss their findings, which they have not made public.

The group found the Democratic nominee got 7 percent fewer voters in counties in Wisconsin that used electronic-voting machines instead of optical scanners or paper ballots, according to the magazine.

Clinton could have reportedly not received as many as 30,000 votes, which could have cost her the state, the publication reported. Clinton lost Wisconsin by about 27,000 votes. The group is saying the pattern should be looked into, though it has not found proof of hacking.

President-elect Donald Trump currently has 290 electoral votes and Clinton has 232. Trump won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and Michigan has not yet officially been called for either candidate.

The deadline to file for a recount in Wisconsin is Friday; in Pennsylvania is Monday; and in Michigan is next Wednesday, according to the publication. Ahead of the election, election authorities and cyber security experts said a concerted effort to change the outcome of the election through a cyber attack is nearly impossible.

When Trump said during his campaign said the election could be rigged, election officials scoffed at the claims, noting the country’s use of a decentralized system in which ballots are counted by thousands of Democratic and Republican officials across the country.

The decentralized system acts as a barrier to widespread fraud.