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Recount requests moving forward
Jill Stein will challenge Trump’s Michigan victory, announced Monday. (Jim Young/Reuters)
By Nancy Benac
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Nearly three weeks after Election Day, Michigan officials certified Monday that Donald Trump won the state by 10,704 votes out of nearly 4.8 million to claim all its 16 electoral votes.

But there’s more wrangling to come on the final vote count in Michigan and nationwide.

Jill Stein’s Green Party served notice that it would petition for a Michigan recount, as her party pushed forward with recount efforts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Trump won by somewhat wider but still small margins.

Should the results for Trump hold in all three states, as expected, the president-elect would have 306 electoral votes to 232 for Democrat Hillary Clinton. It takes 270 to be elected president.

Only if the results were overturned in all three states would Clinton have a claim on the presidency, and that is widely considered to be out of the question.

If it’s any consolation for Clinton, she’s winning the national popular vote. With some votes still being counted, she is ahead by more than 2 million, about 1.5 percent of the total counted so far.

Trump, in a series of weekend tweets complaining about the Midwest recount efforts, said the Green Party was engaged in a ‘‘scam to fill up their coffers’’ and that ‘‘defeated & demoralized Dems’’ were joining in.

Stirring the post-election pot, Trump made his own unsubstantiated claim of widespread voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire, and California, saying without evidence that he would have won the popular vote if millions of people had not voted illegally.

Stein, who won 1.4 million votes nationwide or about 1 percent of the count, signaled her determination to keep pushing the Midwest recount efforts.

As of Monday, she had raised $6.2 million to finance recounts, according to her campaign website.

There is no evidence that election results were hacked or that electronic voting machines were compromised.

The Clinton campaign, which declined to initiate recounts on its own, said over the weekend it would participate in the recounts requested by Stein ‘‘to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,’’ in the words of campaign lawyer Marc Elias.

Stein’s campaign said she would file a petition Wednesday for a Michigan recount, after which Trump would have seven days to file objections. Trump’s margin of victory in the state was a slim 0.22 percent of the total vote.

Ronna Romney McDaniel, chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, said a recount would be ‘‘a waste of time and disrespectful to all Michigan voters.’’

In Wisconsin, meanwhile, the state elections commission on Monday approved a timetable to start a recount Thursday.

In Pennsylvania, where Trump edged Clinton by about 71,000 votes, or about 1 percent of the vote, Stein filed a suit seeking a statewide recount but it wasn’t clear if the courts had the authority to order one.