Milwaukee’s Biggest Newspaper Obliterates Jill and Hill for their “Vanity Recount Project”

Stein’s quixotic moralizing damages the credibility of the very institution she claims to protect — the sanctity of the ballot box. It could even put Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes at risk if the recount isn’t completed by the time the Electoral College meets in December to officially confirm Trump’s election. Stein wants a hand count of ballots, and sued on Monday to try to force a reluctant state government to do that.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign should have stayed far away from this nonsense. Instead, her campaign is participating in the recount.

Clinton blasted Trump for refusing to say during an October debate whether he would accept the results of the election. Her campaign wrote on Twitter at the time: “Donald Trump refused to say that he’d respect the results of this election. By doing that, he’s threatening our democracy.”

Does she still believe that? She should reaffirm that view.

The president-elect, as he so often does, confused matters in an angry tweet-burst of Trumpian logic. He recklessly claimed with zero evidence that in addition to his win in the Electoral College he also had won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” Fact check: Unofficial tallies show Clinton leading Trump in the popular vote by about 2 million votes nationwide, and there is absolutely no evidence of massive voter fraud. Get real.

Here are the stubborn facts:

■ Trump beat Clinton in the three states by more than 103,000 votes, a narrow margin, to be sure, but one that will be all but impossible to erase in a recount. Trump had an edge of 22,177 votes in Wisconsin; 10,704 in Michigan and 70,795 in Pennsylvania, according to the latest unofficial tallies. Clinton would need to overturn the results in all three states to flip Trump’s Electoral College victory. No candidate has ever picked up so many votes in a recount. It’s foolish to even contemplate it.

■ Stein, who almost certainly pulled more votes from Clinton than from Trump, received 49,286 votes in Pennsylvania, 51,643 in Michigan and 31,006 in Wisconsin, according to unofficial tallies. In other words, the person who got 1% or less of the vote in these states is the one demanding a recount. Why should she be allowed to do that?

In the era of extreme everything, it might seem savvy to push for every conceivable edge. But Stein’s actions fly in the face of the long tradition of accepting election results and moving on. This probably isn’t about democracy at all but about marketing Jill Stein and the Green Party as an alternative in the next election. The Greens, after all, have pulled this sort of stunt in the past.

There was mischief aplenty during the election, which raised concerns about the integrity of the balloting. The Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. They attempted to get into voter registration databases. They spread fake news, apparently to help Trump.

But there is no evidence — none whatsoever — that the actual election results were affected despite what the furies on social media (see: #AuditTheVote) would have you believe. These debunked and paranoid theories don’t hold up to scrutiny.

In a blog post Saturday at the website Medium, Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Erik Elias indicated that the Clinton campaign realizes the pointlessness of Stein’s effort. The Clinton campaign joined the effort, he wrote, to “to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself.”

Because the campaign had not “uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves,” Elias wrote.

We assume Clinton still believes what she said in her gracious concession speech the day after the election: “Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”

She should reiterate that sentiment now in a clear, public statement. And, she should reject Stein’s games.

Stein has raised more than $6 million to pay for the recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. A lot of that money probably is coming from disappointed Clinton supporters still infected by the magical thinking that somehow the election of Trump can be overturned.

The supporters of both candidates would be far better off giving their money to a worthy charity. And Stein’s supporters should reflect on what might have been if more of them had not wasted their votes in three Upper Midwestern states on a candidate who had no chance of winning.