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US election system needs to be challenged: Analyst

Saturday, 26 November 2016 5:04 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 26 November 2016 5:08 PM ]

Voters go to the polls to cast their votes in the presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at the Cedarburg Community Center, November, 8, 2016 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by AFP)

The US state of Wisconsin has announced a statewide recount of the ballots cast in the November 8 presidential election, upon a request by Green Party nominee Jill Stein. The candidate was seeking an audit of the voting results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, following hacking allegations.

Jody Grage, vice chair of the Green Party of Washington State, says the election system in the United States has some problems, adding that if it is not challenged, it’s certainly not going to get any better.

“There has been a lot of talk and a lot of pressure put on to do something about the voting here in the United States which is run state by state. Each state has its own rules and ways of doing things, some of the states have paper ballots that can be counted, some use machines that have been shown in some cases to have errors and it really seems pretty basic to democracy that the least we can do is count the votes accurately,” the analyst told Press TV.

She also stated one of the things that does not work right in the US election system is the Electoral College which allows someone who is well behind in the popular vote to actually “win” the election.

The analyst went on to say hacking into the voting machines have “undoubtedly” happened in some states, arguing that there is simply too much evidence on percentages, and the number of votes do not always match up.

Grage further opined that the huge amount of money which has been donated for the recount of votes proves that there are a lot of people who really would like to see this investigation go forward.

“So this is a lot of people who are really protesting, who would like to feel their vote is counted and that the results are accurately tallied and they do not have that confidence and they are willing to chip in,” she said.

Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes went to US President-elect Donald Trump, who managed to beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by a small margin of over 27,000 votes.

Stein, on the other hand, finished fourth in the race by receiving only 30,000 votes in the state and over 1 million votes nationwide.

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