Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (R) and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (front) participate in the third and final presidential debate at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) in Las Vegas, Nevada, the United States, Oct. 19, 2016.(Photo: Xinhua/Yin Bogu)
The campaign of U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Saturday it will participate in the vote recount in Wisconsin, while President-elect Donald Trump dismissed the effort as "scam."
"We feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself," Clinton's campaign attorney Mark Elias wrote on an online statement.
The statement said since the election the campaign has received "hundreds of messages" that urged action against the result, and that the campaign has previously conducted various measures to evaluate the fairness of the vote count.
The steps included having lawyers, data scientists and analysts combing over the election result to spot anomalies, meeting with outside experts to hear their concerns and review their findings, and monitoring and staffing the post-election canvasses.
Elias concluded that after the above mentioned procedures, his team had found no "actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology."
In light of the findings, Clinton's campaign initially decided against filing for recount, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, it will join in, the statement said.
The Wisconsin recount was filed on Friday by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who said in an online video that she will also push for recounts in the states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, which Elias said the Clinton campaign will also participate.
The three states where Stein has asked for recount were the most closely contested states during the presidential election, with Republican candidate Donald Trump's combined lead in all three states just topping 100,000 votes, according to figures released by state authorities.
Trump had a 70,000 vote lead in Pennsylvania, 10,000 in Michigan, and 27,000 in Wisconsin.
Stein won approximately one percent of the vote in each of the three states, which means she needs to pay for the cost of the recount, according to state legislation.
Local media reported that she has raised over five million U.S. dollars to finance her recount bid, 3.5 million dollars more than her campaign fund.
Trump said Saturday in a fiery statement that Stein's request for a vote recount is "ridiculous."
"This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused," Trump's statement said.
"This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall...to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount," Trump said.
Clinton's campaign admitted that history is not on its side, as "the number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states -- Michigan -- well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount."
Clinton needs to overturn the result in all three states in order to bag enough electoral votes to replace Trump in the White House.
Trump announced victory in the presidential election on Nov. 9, after upsetting rival Clinton in several key states that were traditionally viewed as blue states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The result sparked anger among thousands of Clinton supporters who staged mass protests across the country and called for recounts.
