Feature Report: Pennsylvania “Recount” Not Possible

“IT CAN’T HAPPEN”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Nov. 28, 2016) — Early on Monday afternoon, a comment was left at The Post & Email with a link to a blog post by “Ren Jander, JD,” stating that contrary to the fundraising website of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, a “recount” of the votes in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is legally impossible at this point.

After seeing the comment and reading the article to which the link led, The Post & Email contacted Jander and interviewed him by phone for approximately 36 minutes.  His blog post, published early on Monday morning, is titled, “THERE WILL BE NO RECOUNT IN PENNSYLVANIA: Jill Stein Perpetrating Election Fraud.”

“No one has gotten this right,” Jander told The Post & Email, whose post relies heavily on Pennsylvania Election Code, P.L. 1333, No. 320.

In writing about Stein’s requested recounts in the states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan on Sunday, this writer had located the law but believed, based on its passage in 1937, that it was not current. However, Jander explained that changes made over the years have been noted under each such section of the statute, which he said he found to be more than 250 pages in length and very tedious reading.

Jander informed us that Sections 14 and 17 of the code are the most important to the question of the manner in which the results of a Pennsylvania election can be contested.  Sections are denoted with Roman numerals, and Section XIV begins on page 162.

“Jill Stein is promoting it as a recount.  The recount is gone; it can’t happen.  The statute requires 100 petitioners, and the petitioners must be people who are eligible to vote in Pennsylvania and who actually did vote.  Five of them have to swear an affidavit under penalty of perjury, and they have to swear to facts,” Jander said.

“Nobody has pointed to any facts that point to prima facie evidence,” Jander told us.  “The facts have to establish a prima facie case that something illegal happened.  Right now, all they’re pointing to is a group of election experts who are saying, ‘These results don’t look the way we thought they would look.'”

Jander recommended that interested readers listen to an interview at The Brad Blog with Stein on November 25. “If she is behind people swearing affidavits and making them think that they can go to court and make a petition to contest the election when those people actually think they’re asking for a recount, and they go and put their name to something and play fast and loose with the facts, those people are facing five years in prison, and she’s facing seven for suborning perjury,” he told us.  “If you conspire to enlist other people to commit offenses, it’s a third-degree felony, as I said in the article.”

“If you look on the calendar of the Pennsylvania Secretary of State, you’ll see that November 15 is the date when all of the election results had to be computed.  It does say that five days later is the last day to petition for a recount.  If someone had asked for a recount, then everything has to be retabulated.  But that bird has flown; that’s not going to happen.”

The same timeline states that November 23 is the “last day on which a recount or recanvass ordered by the SECRETARY OF THE COMMONWEALTH can be scheduled to begin.”

“As of this morning, Stein is still talking about a ‘voter-initiated recount,'” Jander said. “Twenty days after election is the last day to petition for a ‘contest,’ which is a different thing altogether.”

Before speaking with Jander, The Post & Email left a message with a media representative for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State and is awaiting a return call.