The bigger story of the Wisconsin recount

Hilary Clinton lost the election and Donald Trump is going to be president. It is over and there is nothing right now that can change that. Not crying on Tumblr or Facebook, not protesting or rioting, and no recounts.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount in Wisconsin has been completed. Donald Trump has been unsurprisingly confirmed as the winner. While some Clinton supporters hoped that this would reverse the results, the recount only served to strengthen Donald Trump’s lead over her in the state. There have been unsuccessful efforts by Stein to begin recounts in other the other key states of Pennsylvania and Michigan as both states have blocked the notion. If Hilary were to win and change this election (assuming more recounts were to be held), she would need all three of the states to revert to a Democrat victory. Due to Wisconsin remaining Republican, the math of a Clinton victory is non-existent. A University of Alberta associate professor with the Department of Political Science, Judy Garber, affirms this isn’t the hail mary that Clinton supports hoped for, but rather it scratches at a bigger issue present in the electoral system.

The recount proves that the U.S. has a bigger problem than a Trump presidency. Garber attests that Jill Stein’s objective is to “make a point about American elections.” The point being made is twofold: one, that the system is decentralized as it leads to increasingly stronger two party system, and the other being that the control over voting is also decentralized as it lies in “partisan hands.” The latter allows for one to imagine that future elections can be “perverted.” When asked for clarification on this, Garber explicitly and carefully avoided the term “rigged.” She instead described the perversion as “subject to such a big array” of voting machinery, ballot types, methods for counting and recording votes, and a mix of absentee, in-person, early and day voting etc. The problem present is that voter administration in every county in every state is partisan; however, Garber continued to stress that there is nothing to suggest the election was rigged.

Choosing Wisconsin for the recount was not random either. Garber contends that it was chosen not only because of result anomalies found by statisticians but by the “Draconian voter ID laws” present in the state. Garber went as far as suggesting that the intensely strict laws on which IDs are acceptable offer “no possible result other than disenfranchisement.” While Jill Stein isn’t focusing on how Hilary Clinton should have won the election but rather she’s demonstrating “all the things that can go wrong with an election.” Garber also affirms that this isn’t about the outcome of the election; instead, it is about fairness in the election. She noted that this wasn’t anything new as it was initially brought forth by Donald Trump during his campaign. Garber concluded that Jill stein is “answering Trump” by continuing his narrative of a flawed and outdated system.

Garber was not quiet about her own disdain with the results. She reminded me that while Clinton won “more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won,” she still lost the election due 100,000 Trump votes in key states.  This is the only election system where an outcome like this is possible, which has only served to further Jill Stein’s point.

All this considered, the recounts aren’t about changing the election, they’re about proving there’s a problem with the electoral college and the electoral system in general. If people hope to see change, they have to remain focused on this throughout Trump’s presidency so that the issue will be forced into policy by the next election. Consistent focus on electoral reform is only a fantasy because millennials will probably forget about the issue once Tumblr and BuzzFeed inform them on what the next cool thing to be offended by is.