AMHERST — Two days after President-elect Donald Trump declared victory in the Nov. 8 election, John Bonifaz’s telephone rang.
On the other end of the line were “election integrity advocates” who wanted the advice of the Amherst voting rights attorney about the accuracy of the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
They discussed anomalies they had seen in the voting process on Election Day, including possible hacking of voting machines and voter databases, coinciding with likely human and machine errors in vote tallies.
Bonifaz has since become an adviser for the coalition of academics and election experts who are backing recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania requested by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.
The recount effort, which is already moving ahead in Wisconsin, could help identify and uncover the extent of any deliberate manipulation, or unintentional misrepresentation, of the actual vote, Bonifaz said.
Recount supporters in Michigan must file a recount request by Wednesday. Securing a recount in Pennsylvania could take more time because that state allows recounts to be conducted at a precinct if at least three voters from that precinct request one. Stein’s supporters started doing that Monday, but it would take thousands of voters to get them going in all of Pennsylvania’s precincts.
Bonifaz, who participated in another controversial recount in Ohio during the 2004 presidential race, said the integrity of elections is at stake, because there are no mandatory audits of results in most states.
“There are real questions about whether there is a verifiable process,” Bonifaz, founder of the National Voting Rights Institute, said from his Amherst home Monday. “We do not do any kind of auditing or double-checking of our elections.”
The results of the election, as announced early on the morning of Nov. 9, show Republican Trump defeating former Secretary of State and Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College, 290-232. But this came after narrow wins in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. On Monday, Michigan formally certified Trump as the winner there, handing him 16 additional electoral votes. The margin was 10,704 votes out of 4.8 million, approximately two-tenths of a percent.
Prior to and during the election, Bonifaz said there was unprecedented interference in the United States electoral system, observing that the Illinois voter database was hacked and attempts were made to intrude in at least 20 other states. There was also the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email system and an alert, put out by the White House eight days before the election, that Russia might try to influence the election.
Bonifaz said he was contacted two days after the election by election integrity advocates about anomalies they had seen, including that Trump fared better in Wisconsin’s precincts where touch-screen voting occurs, rather than the marking of paper ballots that are tabulated by optical scan machines.
Bonifaz is familiar with recounts, serving as lead counsel in the 2004 recount of the presidential vote in Ohio, and is also aware that errors can be made with counting ballots, even when nothing nefarious has occurred.
He points to the 2008 Minnesota Senate election when incumbent Republican Norm Coleman led Democratic challenger Al Franken by 215 votes in the initial count, results that flipped when the recount determined that a number of ballots weren’t counted properly, and numerous uncounted absentee ballots had not been tallied.
No matter if the results of the presidential election change, Bonifaz said it will inform citizens that the current process, in which immediate results are sought, is not good for democracy.
Bonifaz is doing this work independent of Free Speech for the People, the organization he cofounded that aims to remove big money and corporate interests from politics.
Bonifaz said partisans often leave the stage without challenging the results, as happened on the morning of Nov. 9 when Clinton conceded the election, hours after Trump declared himself the winner.
“We saw a very quick election of the victor, and a very quick concession by the runner-up — and then questions emerge,” Bonifaz said.
This only changed when Stein, who has standing by her presence on the Wisconsin ballot, sought the recount. Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias stated, “We intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.”
Whether there is a chance to tip the election is uncertain, but the investigative powers associated with recounts, including examining touch screen machines with cybersecurity experts, should be fruitful, Bonifaz said. These electronic machines have been banned in some states, such as California.
Though there has been criticism of Stein raising millions of dollars for the recounts, and allegations she is making money off the recounts and gaining access to Democratic donor lists, Bonifaz said she and donors, who are contributing an average of $42, should be thanked for making future elections more trustworthy.
“I think this is a healthy process for democracy,” Bonifaz said. “If we don’t verify the vote, we’ll have these same questions remain, which I think is damaging to the process.”
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
