Experts ask Clinton to seek recount in 3 battleground states

NEW YORK (AP) — A group of election lawyers and data experts have asked Hillary Clinton's campaign to call for a recount of the vote totals in three battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — to ensure that a cyberattack was not committed to manipulate the totals.

There is no evidence that the results were hacked or that electronic voting machines were compromised.

"The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence?_?paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania," Halderman wrote.

The focal point of any possible electoral cyberattack presumably would have been electronic voting machines that, whether or not they are connected to the internet, could be infected with malware that could change vote totals.

Many election experts have called for routine post-election audits designed to boost public confidence in vote outcomes, by guarding against both tampering and natural vote-counting mistakes.

In many states, audits involve hand-counting the votes on paper ballots and comparing the results to the totals stored in the state's electronic voting system.

In states without regular audits, a candidate who question the results gets "painted as a sore loser," Pamela Smith, president of the nonprofit Verified Voting, said in an interview earlier this year.