Bernie Sanders says 'no one expects profound change' from recount

Defeated primary candidate says it is important to let the recount go ahead

Former US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has said no one expects “profound change” as a result of the Wisconsin recount.

The Hillary Clinton campaign’s chief legal advisor confirmed in a blog post that they would join the legal bid by the Green party’s Jill Stein to force a recount in Wisconsin and two other states where Donald Trump’s margin of victory was incredibly small.

Marc Elias said the campaign had decided to participate in the suit but said they had found no evidence of any hacking or abuse of electronic voting systems as has been alleged.

Some have claimed that the vote for Ms Clinton was down by seven per cent in areas with electronic ballots compared to areas with paper ballots and suggested she should have received an extra 30,000 votes. Mr Trump won the state by 27,000 votes.

But speaking to CNN, Mr Sanders said: “(The recount) is taking place, the Green party has the legal right to do. In every election there is a recount.

“No one expects there to be any profound change but there is no harm in going through the process”.

On Friday, Ms Stein – who won just one per cent of the vote in Wisconsin – confirmed she had filed the motion and a recount was expected to start next week.

If the courts were to decide in Ms Stein’s favour and a recount in all three states – Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – was tipped in Ms Clinton’s favour, it would be enough to give her 278 Electoral College votes to Mr Trump’s 260.

This would change the outcome of the election but most people agree the scenario is very unlikely.

Mr Trump denounced the recount bid as “ridiculous” and a “scam” – despite claiming the polls were rigged in Ms Clinton’s favour for several weeks before election day.

Ms Stein, who has until next week to file a request for a recount in Pennsylvania and Michigan, stressed that there was no definitive proof of voter fraud.

She said: “Let me be very clear: We do not have evidence of fraud. We do not have smoking guns. What we do have is an election that was surrounded by hacking”.

The election campaign was marred by accusations that Russian state-backed hackers were dumping private, damaging information about Ms Clinton and the Democrat party to help Mr Trump’s campaign.

A cache of emails sent between leading members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were published by Wikileaks in July leading to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

It emerged that Ms Wasserman-Schultz and several colleagues had plotted ways to undermine Mr Sanders candidacy in the primary race to make sure Ms Clinton won the nomination.