Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed a petition Friday to request a vote recount in Wisconsin, one of three recounts she is seeking in swing states won by Donald Trump this month.
Wisconsin state Elections Commission Administrator Mike Haas said Stein, and one other group, filed the request at midafternoon, shortly before the 5 p.m. CST (2330 UTC) deadline. The commission said it was "preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes for president of the United States."
A post on Stein's campaign website called the voting machines used in Wisconsin "highly vulnerable to hacking and malicious programming," and said the machines lacked any security features.
The state must meet a federal deadline of December 13 to complete the recount.
Earlier Friday, Stein posted on her website that supporters had raised $5 million for the recount effort and other associated costs, in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. She said on her website that the total cost for all three recounts would be up to $7 million.
"Now that we have completed funding Wisconsin's recount ... and funding Pennsylvania's recount [due Monday], we will focus on raising the needed funds for Michigan's recount [due Wednesday]," the website said.
Trump narrowly won in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania; Michigan is still too close to call.
'Protecting our democracy'
Stein stands to gain little from a recount, having won around 1 percent of the popular vote.
The statement on her website said the recount effort wasn't meant to help Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump. Rather, the website said the move "is about protecting our democracy."
While Clinton fans across the country may be hopeful about the recount, Trump's victory margins in the three states are large enough that overturning the results seems unlikely, according to experts.
The Clinton campaign has yet to comment on the possible recount, but she and her supporters repeatedly denounced Trump during the campaign after he said he thought the election might be rigged against him.
"We are a country based on laws, and we've had hot, contested elections going back to the very beginning," Clinton said in October after her final debate with Trump. "But one of our hallmarks has always been that we accept the outcomes of our election."
