Clinton team to take part in U.S. presidential recount in Wisconsin

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign will take part in a Wisconsin recount of votes cast in the U.S. presidential race won by Republican Donald Trump, a campaign official said on Saturday.

Wisconsin's election board on Friday approved the recount requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein. She has said she wants to guarantee the integrity of the U.S. voting system since computer hacking had marked the Nov. 8 election.

Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign counsel, said the campaign had not planned to seek a recount since its own investigation had failed to turn up any sign of hacking of voting systems.

"But now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides," Elias said in a post on the Medium website.

Clinton's campaign should be legally represented in Wisconsin to be able to monitor the recount, he said.

If Stein follows through on promises for recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, "we will take the same approach in those states as well," Elias said.

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan were battleground states where Trump edged out Clinton by relatively thin margins. Although Trump won the Electoral College tally, Clinton will have won the national popular vote by more than 2 million ballots when the final results are in.

The Wisconsin recount will include examining by hand the state's nearly 3 million ballots. The recount is expected to begin late next week and faces a Dec. 13 deadline

Stein has raised $5.8 million of the $7 million needed to cover fees and legal costs for recounts in the three states, according to her campaign website.

The Wisconsin filing fee is $1.1 million, and the $500,000 filing fee has been raised for a recount in Pennsylvania, the site said. The deadline for filing in that state is Monday.

The voting margins make it highly unlikely any recounts would end up giving Clinton a win in all three states, which would be needed for the overall election result to change.

Experts urged extra scrutiny of the three states, Stein told CNN on Friday, because their voting systems were seen as vulnerable.

The Trump campaign did not have an immediate response to Elias' statement.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton in West Palm Beach, Florida; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)