TRENTON -- Nearly three weeks after Donald Trump celebrated a stunning victory on Election Day, the rancorous 2016 presidential race has suddenly been resurrected.
On Friday, Green Party nominee Jill Stein filed for a recount of the election results in Wisconsin -- one of the key states that helped Trump, a Republican, score an upset over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Stein, a third-party candidate who received less than 1 percent of the vote across the nation, is also considering seeking recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two other traditionally Democratic states that Trump carried.
On Saturday, Clinton's top campaign lawyer said it will aid in the effort, even though Clinton conceded the race to Trump on election night.
Trump -- who refused to agree to accept election results if he lost and spent a potion of his campaign warning about the possibility of a rigged election -- released a statement Saturday calling the recount a "scam" to help Stein "fill her coffers with money."
Stein has so far raised more than $6 million to help cover the costs of the recount.
"The people have spoken, and the election is over," Trump added.
Then, just after 4 a.m. Sunday, the president-elect unleashed a series of tweets lashing out in the wake of the unexpected development.
But could the recount actually alter the outcome of the race? It seems unlikely.
An analysis of the Electoral College map shows Clinton would need to take all three states to overturn the results.
Though Clinton leads the national popular vote by nearly 2 million votes, Trump won 290 electoral votes to Clinton's 232. It takes 270 to win the White House. Michigan is still too close to call.
Trump leads Michigan by about 11,000 votes, and won Pennsylvania by about 68,000 and Wisconsin by about 27,000.
New York magazine published a report Tuesday in which a group of computer scientists and election lawyers called for a recount in those states, arguing that the results may have been manipulated or hacked.
Marc Elias, Clinton's general counsel, wrote Saturday in a piece on the website Medium that the Clinton campaign did not plan to initiate a recount itself "because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology."
"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 added.
Still, Elias noted that the deficit in even Michigan "exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount."
President Obama's administration told Politico it has seen no evidence of hackers tampering with the results.
Larry Sabato, director of the Institute for Politics at the University of Virginia, said "the chances of this election being overturned are near zero, if not zero."
"The Greens have obvious motives," Sabato said. "They are raising big money and getting a golden mail list of donors, too. Maybe this enables the Greens from getting a share of the blame for Clinton's defeat; Stein cost Clinton Michigan, and maybe Wisconsin."
"For the Democrats, maybe this is an outlet for the deep anger and frustration that the grassroots feels about Clinton's defeat even though she won the popular vote by a record amount," he added.
Statistics guru Nate Silver also dismissed the idea that the recount could change things:
Matthew Hale, a political science professor at Seton Hall University, said "the other question to consider is what might actually happen if the outcome flipped."
"Imagining both sides taking to the streets is fairly frightening," Hale said.
Critics berated Trump when in the final presidential debate he refused to say whether he would accept the race's results.
During an interview Sunday morning on ABC's "This Week," Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, suggested Democrats are now being hypocritical.
"All they did was ask people like me and Mr. Trump himself six ways to Sunday, a million times plus: 'Will you accept the election results?'" Conway said. "So the question for the Democrats is: Why are you doing this?"
Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.