Could A Recount Really Happen?

Even though polls for much of the election season showed Hillary Clinton ahead, on election night, the results turned out much differently than anticipated. Whether FBI Director James Comey's announcement that the bureau would investigate new emails related to the original private server probe turned off would-be Clinton voters or some other reason, Donald Trump is the presumed president-elect. Now, many are wondering, will there be a recount?

A recount is an option when there's a possibility that the vote is close and there could've been interference with the general electorate having a chance to vote. And as early as last week, the Democratic National Committee put those potential wheels into motion and went so far as to sue the Republican National Committee over Trump's proposed "Trump Election Observers." According to the plan, "election observers" would be sent to polling places to keep an eye out for any voter fraud or misconduct.

However, others saw these "election observers" as an opportunity for Trump supporters to intimidate voters showing up to the polls, especially minorities. Some states have even gone so far as to file a lawsuit to reject the observers from being in their polling places, and the states that have done so are important battleground states including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Ohio. In the suit, the states are calling Trump's idea unconstitutional and a "campaign of vigilante voter intimidation" that infringes on multiple voting rights laws. The Ohio Democratic Party wrote, "Trump has sought to advance his campaign's goal of 'voter suppression' by using the loudest microphone in the nation to implore his supporters to engage in unlawful intimidation."

It's not just those four states that called out the Trump campaign for voter intimidation. In North Carolina, the NAACP sued the state for allegedly cancelling voter registrations in certain counties that would potentially disenfranchise African-American voters.

The last time a recount happened in presidential history was when Al Gore ran against — and lost to — George W. Bush. Many attributed that discrepancy in Florida to voter suppression after it was uncovered that thousands of African American voters were wrongly labeled as felons and turned away from the polls. An investigation into the matter by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission estimated that a potential 12,000 voters were wrongly turned away in Florida. According to the commission's investigation, 44 percent of those voters were African American. And since, as the commission calculated, 90 percent of African Americans voted for Gore, it can be estimated that 4,752 would-be Gore voters could have been prevented from voting, which is nine times the number that Bush won by.

It's not for sure if there will officially be a recount yet, but the Dems have been preparing in case they decide to go that route.