WASHINGTON (AP) — Monday’s political coverage (all times EST):
Updated: 2:45 p.m.: A lawyer for Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s campaign has notified the Michigan elections board that it will seek a recount of the presidential election results.
Mark Brewer told the Board of State Canvassers that the recount petition will be filed on Wednesday. The board on Monday certified Republican Donald Trump’s 10,704-vote win over Democrat Hillary Clinton out of nearly 4.8 million ballots cast.
Brewer, a former Michigan Democratic Party chairman, says about 84,000 Michigan voters cast ballots but not in the presidential race — a higher number than in the past. He says tabulator machines are known to not count every vote and are vulnerable to hacking.
The state’s recount policy is to count every ballot by hand.
Updated: 2:15 p.m.: Jill Stein is on track to raise twice as much for an election recount effort than she did for her own failed Green Party presidential bid.
Fueled by the social media hashtag #recount2016 and millions of dispirited Hillary Clinton voters, Stein’s recount effort in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania had already netted $6.3 million by Monday, according to her campaign website.
That’s millions more than the roughly $3.5 million she raised during her entire campaign.
Stein said she is “proud to stand up for election integrity” regardless of whether it changes the outcome of the presidential race.
Laurence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law professor, said that recounts are “entirely within the law” and that Stein’s effort is probably aimed more at “trying to gain attention and establish herself as a national player.”
Updated: 2:10 p.m.: President-elect Donald Trump has won Michigan’s 16 electoral votes.
The Board of State Canvassers certified Trump’s 10,704-vote victory on Monday, nearly three weeks after the election. The two-tenths of a percentage point margin out of nearly 4.8 million votes is the closest presidential race in Michigan in more than 75 years.
Trump’s win in Michigan gives the Republican 306 electoral votes to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 232.
Trump is the first Republican presidential nominee to win Michigan since 1988.
Green Party candidate Jill Stein is expected to ask for a recount. She has until Wednesday. Trump would have seven days to file objections to her request.
Updated: 1:55 p.m.: The White House says President Barack Obama isn’t worried about his successor reversing his detente with Cuba.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest says the policy has resulted in new economic ties, travel and business deals that make it very difficult to undo.
Earnest cited new daily commercial flights from the U.S. to the island, as well as a surge of other U.S. investment allowed under new regulations.
Earnest says reversing the policy would mean “a significant economic blow” to Cubans, and it is “not as easy as a stroke of a pen.”
President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he “will terminate” Obama’s reestablishment of diplomatic ties and normalization of relations if Cuba isn’t willing to negotiate a better agreement.
Updated: 1:35 p.m.: Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe says Donald Trump should provide proof to back up his claim that there was widespread voter fraud in Virginia on Election Day.
The president-elect is claiming, without evidence, that millions of people voted illegally in the election he won. Trump alleged that three states, including Virginia, saw “serious voter fraud.”
Speaking to reporters Monday, McAuliffe laughed when asked about Trump’s comments. The Democratic governor said there was not a single instance of voter fraud occurring in Virginia. He said Trump should “put proof behind” the allegation.
Hillary Clinton easily won Virginia, the only southern state to back her on Election Day.
Updated: 12:20 p.m.: President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to end the detente with Cuba initiated by the Obama administration.
Trump tweeted Monday he “will terminate” President Barack Obama’s reestablishment of diplomatic ties and normalization of relations if “Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole.”
But Trump’s warning could face opposition from some Republicans on Capitol Hill and corporate leaders who see continued engagement with Havana as good for American businesses and the best way to force the Cuban government to change.
Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake said this past weekend a “get tough” policy that isolates Havana and restricts travel and commerce will hurt the Cuban people and make the U.S. government “a convenient scapegoat for failed socialist policies.”
Updated: 11:55 a.m.: The Green Party says it will ask a Pennsylvania court to order a statewide recount of the state’s Nov. 8 presidential election result.
But it’s unclear if the courts would have authority to do so.
A lawyer for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein wouldn’t discuss what would be alleged in the expected lawsuit Monday.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump edged Democrat Hillary Clinton by about 71,000 votes, or about 1 percent, in Pennsylvania.
Democratic Secretary of State Pedro Cortes says there’s no evidence of voting irregularities or cyberattacks on Pennsylvania’s voting machines, 96 percent of which record votes electronically and leave no paper trail.
A GOP lawyer says the courts lack authority to order a statewide recount. Cortes says he’s also unaware of the courts having authority to do so
Updated: 11:50 a.m.: A Republican member of the Electoral College from Texas says he’s resigning so he won’t cast one of the state’s 38 electoral votes for Donald Trump.
Art Sisneros previously told The Associated Press that he was wavering on supporting Trump because the Republican “is not biblically qualified for office.”
In a lengthy weekend blog post, Sisneros updated that, saying “the best option I see at this time is to resign my position as an elector.”
Texas doesn’t require its presidential electors to vote in accordance with the state’s presidential election results. Trump won Texas by around 9 percentage points and captured 290 overall electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232.
Texas electors meet in Austin next month to vote for president. By state law, they can vote then on a replacement for Sisneros.
Updated: 10 a.m.: President-elect Donald Trump is claiming, without evidence, that millions of people voted illegally in the election he won, issuing the baseless claim as part of his angry response to a recount effort led by the Green Party and joined by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Trump tweeted on Sunday that he won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” He later alleged “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.”
Trump’s transition team did not provide any evidence to back up the president-elect’s assertions of fraud in the November election. They pointed only to past charges of irregularities in voter registration.
There has been no evidence of widespread tampering or hacking that would change the results of the presidential contest between Trump and Clinton.
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