She's not giving up yet: Jill Stein continues push for a recount in Pennsylvania by asking for a federal court order after state judge demanded she pay another $1million

  • Green Party candidate will ask for an emergency court order Monday 
  • Campaign spokesman Jonathan Abady said the battle was far from over 
  • Stein dropped the case in state courts after a judge demanded a $1m bond
  • She said the decision was 'outrageous' and a 'barrier to democracy' 
  • 'This is yet another sign that Pennsylvania's antiquated election law is stacked against voters,' she said  

Jill Stein said she will seek help from the federal courts as she continues her push for a recount in Pennsylvania.

The Green Party candidate said she will ask for an emergency court order on Monday to spark the count, hours after she dropped the case in the state courts when a judge demanded she pay an extra $1million. 

Campaign lawyer Jonathan Abady made a statement late on Saturday night saying the battle was far from over.

'Make no mistake — the Stein campaign will continue to fight for a statewide recount in Pennsylvania.

'We are committed to this fight to protect the civil and voting rights of all Americans.'  

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein has dropped her bid for an election recount in Pennsylvania because her campaign cannot pay a $1m bond demanded by a judge

Stein blasted the expense of the recounts on Twitter as news broke of the dropped bid in Pennsylvania on Saturday night

They continued their legal tussle in The Keystone State, after a recount began Thursday in Wisconsin, while a recount could begin next week in Michigan. 

In the statement, Abady said barriers to a recount in Pennsylvania are pervasive and the state court system is ill-equipped to address the problem. 

Stein said the decision to drop the case in the state courts was made after a court ruling ordered that voters who requested the recount to pay a $1million bond. 

'The judge's outrageous demand that voters pay such an exorbitant figure is a shameful, unacceptable barrier to democratic participation,' she said in statement. 

'This is yet another sign that Pennsylvania's antiquated election law is stacked against voters.'

'By demanding a $1million bond from voters yesterday, the court made clear it has no interest in giving a fair hearing to these voters' legitimate concerns over the accuracy, security and fairness of an election tainted by suspicion.' 

Stein's attorney wrote in court papers that the petitioners for the recount were 'regular citizens of ordinary means' who could not afford to post the bond. 

Stein had tried to fund the recount after claims that voting machines had been hacked in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan  where Donald Trump won. 

The campaign of Republican President-elect Donald Trump had requested a $10 million bond, court papers showed. 

Stein raised nearly $7million to fund statewide election recounts in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

She blasted the expense of the recounts on Twitter, writing: 'How odd is it that we must jump through bureaucratic hoops and raise millions of dollars so we can trust our election results?'

'#Recount2016 is so expensive because of elected leaders who have refused to invest in a 21st-century voting system.' 

Stein's campaign for a recount had been framed as an effort to explore whether voting machines and systems had been hacked and the election result manipulated.

The decision to drop the campaign in Pennsylvania came two days before a court hearing was scheduled in the case. 

Green Party-backed efforts to analyze election software in scattered precincts are still continuing. 

Stein also said she will make a 'major announcement' regarding her next steps in the recount process at a news conference Monday outside Trump Tower in New York.   

Trump's victory in Pennsylvania was particularly stunning: the state's fifth-most electoral votes are a key stepping stone to the White House, and no Republican presidential candidate had captured the state since 1988.

Stein had said the purpose of Pennsylvania's recount was to ensure 'our votes are safe and secure,' considering hackers' probing of election targets in other states and hackers' accessing of the emails of the Democratic National Committee and several Clinton staffers. 

US security officials have said they believe Russian hackers orchestrated the email hacks, something Russia has denied.

Stein's lawyers, however, had offered no evidence of hacking in Pennsylvania's election. They sought unsuccessfully in recent days to get various counties to allow a forensic examination of their election system software.

Green County Clerk Michael Doyle carries ballots to a secure location after being tabulated during the presidential recount at the Green County Courthouse in Monroe, Wisconsin

A recount is already underway in Wisconsin. Workers are pictured looking over absentee ballots in Milwaukee on Thursday, December 1

Lawyers for Trump and the state Republican Party argued there was no evidence, or even an allegation, that tampering with Pennsylvania's voting systems had occurred. 

Further, Pennsylvania law does not allow a court-ordered recount, they argued, and a lawyer for the Green Party had acknowledged that the effort was without precedent in Pennsylvania.

The case also had threatened Pennsylvania's ability to certify its presidential electors by the Dec. 13 federal deadline, Republican lawyers argued.

On Saturday, GOP lawyer Lawrence Tabas, said the case had been meant 'solely for purposes to delay the Electoral College vote in Pennsylvania for President-Elect Trump.'

The state's top elections official, Secretary of State Pedro Cortes, a Democrat, has said there was no evidence of any sort of cyberattacks or irregularities in the election. Any recount would change few votes, Cortes predicted.

As of Friday, Trump's margin of victory in Pennsylvania was 49,000, or less than 1 percent, out of 6 million votes cast, according to state election officials. 

Final counts were outstanding in some counties, including heavily populated Allegheny County, but state and county officials did not expect any outstanding uncounted votes to change the outcome of the presidential election in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania's automatic statewide recount trigger is 0.5 percent. Stein drew less than 1 percent of the votes cast.

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