US election recount: Jill Stein files for vote audit in swing state of Michigan

The vote audit continues after Wisconsin and Pennsylvania

Ms Stein raised more than $5 million to request recounts in the three states (AP)

Green party candidate Jill Stein has filed a request to recount the nearly 4.8 million presidential election votes in the swing state of Michigan.

“I and the undersigned members of my slate of electors are aggrieved on account of fraud or mistake in the canvass of the votes by the inspectors of election, and/or the returns made by the inspectors and/or by the Board of County Canvassers and/or by the Board of State Canvassers,” Ms Stein said in her request.

“I request that all of the precincts and absent voter counting board precincts within the state of Michigan be recounted by hand count.”

As reported by the Detroit Free Press, her lawyer Mark Brewer arrived at the Board of Elections with a cheque for $973,250, enough to pay for a recount of $125 per precinct. The request will be reviewed by a Trump campaign lawyer before announcing if any action will be taken.

Mr Brewer said he does not expect a recount, but the purpose was to investigate any evidence of mistakes or fraud which might have happened as the ballots were counted.

Ms Stein has not said there was any evidence of fraud or hacking.

At a press conference immediately after filing the recount, Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, said that the state used paper ballots, and it was necessary to recount the paper ballots to make sure "voting computers were not acting dishonestly [tallied up] because they had been hacked".

He said, during his research, he had personally been able to hack the type of voting machines used in Michigan - but he had not seen evidence the machines had been hacked during the actual election.

The goal is to finish the recount by 10 December, with 19 larger counties and more smaller counties.

The same board officially announced that Donald Trump had won the state’s 16 electoral college votes - by 10,704 votes - on Monday after the result had been too close to call for almost three weeks. It was the last state to reveal its final result from 8 November.

The move from Ms Stein follows her filing requests to recount the votes in Pennsylvania’s 100 precincts, which have a combined 20 electoral college votes, and in Wisconsin, which has 10 votes.