Ballot rules, hacking theories and recounts why the U.S. election drags on

Morethan2 weeks after the U.S. election, aspects of the vote are still dragging on. As votes continue to be counted, there have been accusations of possible vote hacking in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And now, a candidate for the presidency is petitioning for arecount in those states. Here's why the 2016 election resultscontinue to make headlines.

Why are they still counting votes?

Every day seems to elicitanotherheadline that Hillary Clinton's lead in the popular vote continues to grow. And that's because votescontinue to be tabulated as each state has its own deadline for certifying the ballots.

"Since the 2000 electionof Bush versusGore ironically enough,someof the reforms, and well-intentioned and positive reforms, have had an unfortunate byproduct of delaying the counts," saidEdward Foley, director of election law atOhio State University.

Provisional ballots are the biggest factor in this. A person casts a provisional ballotif there's any question about his or her eligibilityas a voter if, for example, the voter hadn't registered or was trying to vote at the wrong polling place.

• Jill Stein raises enough money for recount in Wisconsin
• Trump calls Wisconsin recount 'ridiculous' as Clinton camp joins efforts

In 2002, Congress passed the Help AmericaVote Act, which required all states to have this provisionalballot process. So if apoll workerdoesn't see the voter's name on the list of eligible voters, the worker still has to give the voter a provisional ballot, which then gets evaluated after the election to determine whether it should be counted. In a statelike California, there's a large number of provisional ballots relative to population size, and those taketime to evaluate.

Many states, for the sake of voter convenience, give people the option of sending an absentee ballotby mail. Voters used to need a compelling reasonto vote this way, such as a disability or having to travel on business.But some states, like California, now have no excuse absentee voting, meaning any eligible voter can do it.

And states can set the deadline for when those ballots are received. California has said as long as those ballots are postmarked by election day, they can arrive days later.

But all the votes in all the states will have to be certified beforeDec. 19, when the electoral college meets and casts its votes for the next president.

What's all this talk about hacked results?

A New York magazine articlehascreated a lot of buzz, particularly among Clinton supporters, after reporting that "a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers" wants Clinton to call for a recount in three swing states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

According to the report, the group believes it found "persuasive evidence" that the results in those three states were manipulated or hacked. The article points to Wisconsin, for example, where Clinton received seven per cent fewer votes incounties that used electronic voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots.

"Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000," according to the story.

And, the theory goes, if Clinton really won Wisconsin, then maybe she alsowon Michigan and Pennsylvania. With those three states added to her tally of electoral college votes, she would be the next president.

Her campaign announced Saturday they wouldtake part in the recount in a Wisconsin recount, orin the other battleground states of Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Whatare the odds the results werehacked?

"Zero or close to zero," said election law expert Edward Foley. "Do Ithink there was a problem with the count? No, I don't see any reason to think that."

Many other experts have also dismissed the claims.

Foley saidthe nature of the results wasconsistent across all the states and he questioned whyhackers would only target those three states and not larger ones like Florida and North Carolina.

Michael Cornfield,an associate professor at George Washington University'sGraduate School of Political Management and Research, agreed. Citing the Wisconsin example, Cornfield saidthe hacking theorists are cherry-picking and over-interpretingcoincidenceor correlation without causation.

"There's no anomaly here. And that's what you look for when yoususpecttampering."

So then why all thistalk about recounts?

With high-profile hacksduring the election campaign, and nowthe buzz over these three states, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein haslaunched a fundraisingcampaign for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Stein said she wants toinvestigate the "unexpected results of the election and reported anomalies."

"These concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified.We deserve elections we can trust," she said in a statement.

How likely is Stein to get recounts?

Well, it looks promising in at least two states.

On Friday, Stein'scampaign organization filed a petition with the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which later said it was "preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes for president of the United States."

Under Wisconsin law,the petitioner for a recount must have been a candidate,must state a reason for a recount and must raise enough money to cover the filing fees if they didn't reach a certain percentage of the vote.Stein'scampaign has estimateda Wisconsin recount will cost $1.1 million US, which the team says it has raised.

• Jill Stein raises enough money for recount in Wisconsin
• Clinton urged to seek recount in 3 battleground states

The problem could be the time constraints. There wereabout three million votes cast, and the Stein campaign wants the recount done by hand.The last recount in the state, in 2011, took more than a month to complete, meaning this recount could pass the Dec. 19 deadline for electoral college votes.

Stein's campaign said it hasalso raised enough money for a recount of the 4.8 million ballots in Michigan a cost of $125 perprecinctfor the 6,300precinctsin thestate, according to the Detroit Free Press. (Stein can't request a recount in Michigan until the vote is certified, which is expected on Monday.)

Pennsylvania mightbe a bit trickier.The stateallows individual voters to petition for a recount, but the deadline was last Sunday.A candidate can also contest an election in court, and the deadline for that is Monday.

Will a recountchange anything?

Very doubtful, most experts say. Recounts often increase the vote tallies of both candidates. Trump beat Clinton in Pennsylvania by 70,000votes, in Michigan by 10,000votes and in Wisconsin by 27,000votes.

Even Stein herself said they don't have any "smoking gun" evidence ofvoter fraud, and that she's not trying to overthrow Donald Trumpand doubts that will be the outcome.