title:  Jill Stein Forced To Drop Pennsylvania Recount Bid When Judge Attaches $1 Million Price Tag
text: On Saturday, Green Party candidate Jill Stein was forced to drop her bid for a recount in Pennsylvania when a judge decided on a $1 million bond.Spokesman Sam Scarrow revealed in an emailed statement that an attorney for the Stein campaign said the price was just too high. Petitioners are regular citizens of ordinary means. They cannot afford to post the $1,000,000 bond required by the court,  wrote the lawyer.Stein shared her thoughts on Twitter.How odd is it that we must jump through bureaucratic hoops and raise millions of dollars so we can trust our election results? #Recount2016  Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) December 4, 2016According to court documents, Donald Trump s campaign requested that the judge set the bond for the recount at $10 million.Stein has filed for recounts of the presidential election in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Hillary Clinton announced that she would back Stein s recount efforts in all three states, which prompted Trump to lose his mind. He railed against the efforts on Twitter and denounced the bid for recounts as nothing more than a  scam.  Ironically, he made the case for a recount of even more states at the very same time with his own claims of widespread voter fraud.It is unlikely that the recount would successfully change the outcome of the election in the long run, especially since a margin of this size has never before been overcome. However, Trump sure was acting like he was scared to death of a second look. It seems that, at least in Pennsylvania, he is going to get his way. In Wisconsin and Michigan, Trump has not been so lucky. The recounts in both of these states have already begun. But the push for a recount in the Keystone State seems to have come to an end.On Saturday night, the Pennsylvania GOP issued a statement that read, in part: The filing of a discontinuance of the Election Contest by Jill Stein s petitioners tonight is a recognition that their Election Contest was completely without merit, and meant solely for purposes to delay the Electoral College vote in Pennsylvania for President-Elect Trump Candidate Jill Stein s allegations created the false allusion that some unidentified foreign government hacked our state s voting systems when absolutely no such proof existed. We believe that she always knew that she had no such proof. Pennsylvania election officials published the updated vote count on Friday, which showed Trump s lead over his Democratic rival shrinking to 49,000 from 71,000. As shocking as this may sound, this did not meet Pennsylvania s 0.5 percent trigger for an automatic statewide recount.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images