Election Recount Latest Update 2016: Michigan Stopped, Pennsylvania Sets Court Date, Wisconsin Tally Stays The Same

A federal judge Wednesday stopped an effort to recount votes in Michigan for the presidential election, while similar efforts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania continued inching forward. The Michigan recount spearheaded by Green Party candidate Jill Stein always had little chance of changing the election's results, but the judge stopped the process after just three days, saying no evidence of tampering or mistakes had been presented.

Efforts from Stein in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were still ongoing, but look like they won't change much as well, in terms of the election's results. The Michigan elections board stopped the process of checking millions of votes and was scheduled to meet Thursday, according to the Associated Press. Stein's lawyer has already vowed that they would appeal, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Stein won just 1 percent of the vote in Michigan, but the race between the two front-runners, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, was quite close. President-elect Trump won the state by just 10,704 votes, garnering 2,279,543 votes to Clinton's 2,268,839. The Michigan Republican Party has argued that despite the close vote, the recount was an expensive waste of time because there was no evidence anything was awry. The argument was seemingly effective.

"It's disheartening a judge gave in to Donald Trump and Michigan Republicans," Stein tweeted Thursday morning.

In Wisconsin, the recount had allowed Clinton to pick up 492 votes, barely making a dent in Trump's lead, since he gained 410 votes himself, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Wednesday. In a state where Trump won by more than 22,000 votes, and with half of the state's counties having already completed their recounts, there seemed to be little reason to believe the election results would change.

In Pennsylvania, a judge scheduled a hearing about the recount for Friday. The Republican Party and Trump have argued that the effort could mean the state doesn't certify its results by a Dec. 13 deadline. Election officials have updated the vote count, however, which showed Trump's lead falling to some 44,000, which remains short of the 0.5 margin needed to trigger and automatic recount, the Associated Press reported.

With the Michigan effort halted, Stein's recount push is even more unlikely to effect real change. If the results in all three states were shifted to wins for Clinton, an extremely unlikely outcome, then the former secretary of state would have enough electoral votes to win the election. Trump earned 306 electoral votes, well past the 270 needed to clinch the presidency, despite the fact that millions more Americans cast a ballot for Clinton, who leads in the popular vote by nearly 2.7 million.

The Michigan recount was stopped because Federal Judge Mark Goldsmith said he saw no reason to disagree with a prior appeals court decision that ruled Stein had no claim as an aggrieved candidate since she received just 1 percent of the vote. But Goldsmith also seemed to agree with some of the arguments made by the Michigan Republican Party. The potential for fraud alone does not mean a recount is warranted, he said.

"To date, plaintiffs have not presented evidence of tampering or mistake. Instead, they present speculative claims going to the vulnerability of the voting machinery — but not actual injury," Goldsmith wrote, via the Free Press.