Your Hopes For An Election Recount In Pennsylvania Just Got Crushed

The effort to get a presidential election recount in the state of Pennsylvania just went through a major setback on Monday morning.

The request for a recount in the state was flatly rejected by US District Judge Paul Diamond in Philadelphia.

Diamond wrote – in a 31-page opinion – the "suspicion of a 'hacked' Pennsylvania election borders on the irrational."

He added there is not enough time for a recount because the state's electoral college votes are supposed to be finalized on Tuesday.

The request for a recount came from Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Stein launched a major campaign after the election to get recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. These are all states Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump by slim margins.

Stein raised over $6 million in donations to try to get the recounts. That money is supposed to go to filing and legal costs.

But for those recounts to change anything about the outcome of the election, they would need to completely overturn the results in Wisconsin, Michigan AND Pennsylvania.

Stein can still appeal the Pennsylvania judge's decision, but there's no word yet if she's planning to.

Stein's recount efforts are really, really not going great.

Her request for a recount in Michigan was squashed by the state Supreme Court on Friday.

Stein said during a rally in Detroit on Saturday that her efforts have proven the voting system we have is not trusted.

She said,

We've exhausted what we can do here in Michigan, and I think at this point … we need to fight for those reforms. We need to fight to ensure we have a vote we can count on.

She has only successfully gotten a recount in Wisconsin, and that one's not working out too well to change much.

That recount is almost 100 percent done. So far, it's showing Trump has 628 more votes than originally counted, while Clinton has 653 and Stein has 68. That is not going to help the 27,000 vote margin Clinton had to lose the state.

Unless the electors give some sort of mutiny when they vote next week, or some insane revelations come up about Russian intervention, it's looking more and more likely we're going to have to accept Trump fully as the next president.

Citations: REUTERS, Huffington Post