Hillary Clinton's popular vote lead nears 2 million

WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton has extended her popular vote lead over Donald Trump to over 2 million votes.The margin is leading to a growing chorus for challenging the election results from liberals who suspect electronic voting machines used in some states may have been hacked.

Although the popular vote lead will have no bearing on the final results, the presidency being decided on the basis of electoral votes, the extent of the split verdict is unprecedented. Of the four instances when the president-elect lost the popular vote despite winning the electoral vote, George

Bush

faced the biggest deficit, going down by 5,00,000 votes against Al Gore.

Clinton has now polled 64.4 million votes to Trump's 62.3million, with absentee and provision ballot still being counted. The figures give Clinton 48.1% of the vote to Trump's 46.5%. This has led some to call for an audit of results in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, states Trump won by a whisker.

Although Clinton campaign has indicated that it is not interested in such an exercise,

Green Party

candidate Jill Stein said on Wednesday that she had raised $2.5 million to request a recount in Wisconsin. She is also trying to raise funds to request recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

“ Our effort to recount votes in those states is not intended to help Hillary Clinton,“ Stein campaign manager

David Cobb

said.

According to figures from Michigan, Trump's lead is only 10,704 votes, or 2,403 fewer than the results available on election night. The state is yet to declare the result officially. Trump won Wisconsin by only 22,000 votes. In percentage terms, Trump has won Pennsylvania by 1.2%, Wisconsin by 0.7% and leads in Michigan by only 0.3%. In some states, victory or loss margins of less than 0.5% trigger a recount.

If just 65,000 people had voted differently in three or four states, the results would have been different. Activists have speculated about the possibility of electronic voting machines having been hacked because Clinton's tallies fell 7% shy of expectations in counties that used EVMs. Ironically , it was Trump who repeatedly questioned the sanctity of the electoral process. Every close election in the US renews calls for re-examining or scrapping the electoral college system that was designed to cap what was considered to be the raw passions of popular vote.

(With input from agencies)