United States: In Whose Benefit is the recount?
November 28 2016 By Abiodun Giwa
President Obama, Clinton, Trump and Ryan
The Democratic Party's lack of cohesion and the issue of personal ambition are causes of the current problems creating chaos for the American democracy, with a recount of votes in certain battleground states, weeks after Hillary Clinton has conceded defeat to Donald Trump.
The fight for the recount in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania reportedly follows a demand by the leader of the Green party, Jill Stein, herself a presidential candidate, whose score in the elections, is no where near a winning number, even if the votes are recounted million times.
Having acquired the legal power to go ahead, she is said to have the support of the Hillary campaign and that the campaign will take part in the recount. Curiously, the first question people are asking is that since the Hillary Campaign knows that it will in anyway support a recount, why did Hillary Clinton conceded defeat or asks for recount before conceding the defeat?
The question is appropriate, since it is not legal to concede defeat, when a candidate is not satisfied with an election result. Though said to be a convention for a candidate, who have lost the election to concede defeat, the question the current development has generated is how can any candidate suddenly wake from slumber after weeks of election results and be seeking a recount, when the closest rival to the winner of the election has already conceded defeat?
Many observers fear the dread this development poses to the American democracy and that if there is any mistake and that any effort to switch the election results may resort to chaos for innocent Americans.
A look at events on the election result night shows the chairman of the Clinton Campaign telling the supporters that every vote will be counted and that they should go home to await further development. Before the night ends,news report said that Clinton had conceded defeat. Amid the questions of why she quickly conceded defeat not that a recount is surfacing, some party faithfuls are saying that the President Barack Obama told her to conceded defeat.
Observers are saying that in 2001, when Al Gore asked for a recount in Florida, they say he did not concede defeat until after the recount. And they are saying that should have been a precedence for Clinton to have followed. They say that Trump mentioned this before the election, when asked if he will concede defeat and that he said he will wait and be sure there has been no rigging before he will concede defeat.
Is there a precedence to what the Green Party leader has sought to do and what is likely to be the result of a recount, where it is found to favor a candidate, who has conceded defeat? Would not there be an accusation of a rigging plan and that the recount called by the Green Party is merely the beginning to achieve a grand plan to toss Trump out of the White House?
It is believed that this development would not have arisen, if the Democratic Party as an organization has not given to confusion, leading to the resignation of its first chairman and that the same confusion may have led to the issue of conceding an election result or not to, when legally and common sense demanded the latter, in the face of distrust for an election result.
At the end of the day, the recount may re-confirm Turmp's victory, but the danger lies in the opposite of the reconfirmation of the earlier result. This is troublesome as people are already saying. Stein told her supporters that she had called for recount to ensure the integrity of American elections, but people are saying that Stein may be unknowing pushing America toward chaos.Obama had said that the election was without errors.
