There is much furor at present regarding the Green party nominee Jill Stein calling for a recount in the crucial mid-western states that delivered the election to Donald Trump. As with much of the news lately this is a great deal of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The facts are basically just that. Stein has raised the money for a recount. Assuming she files and gets the money to the relevant election officials in the respective states they will count the votes again. The clue is in the name, really. But there are several details worth noting.

The rapidly diminishing Clinton Campaign did not call for this recount, and neither they nor the taxpayers will be paying for it. If it is to happen those funds will come from Stein. There has also been no intimation from the Clinton camp that they believe the results to be fraudulent or invalid, either in whole or in part.That is likely because the gap between Clinton and Trump in those states is sufficiently large that a recount overturning that kind of vote margin has never occurred before. But they joined the process to ensure that it was conducted fairly, or so they say. It is difficult to imagine a more nefarious motive lurking in their reasoning.

What is puzzling to me is that Trump has been so vehement in his denunciation of the recount. He has already won. There is no chance of this delaying his inauguration, and even less of it reversing the verdict in his favor. It won’t be costly to anyone but those who want it, and if anything will only cement the confidence people can have in the integrity of democratic institutions.

More puzzling still is the assertion Trump made during his anti-recount tirade on twitter. Follow me down the rabbit hole, ladies and gentlemen, into the land of crank and conspiracy. He said that ‘In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally’.

Unsurprisingly news outlets are having difficulty dealing with this particular emission from the billowing cloud of hot air that is The Donald. Nobody has ever had to deal with unsubstantiated nonsense being tweeted by the President Elect before. The press corps isn’t sure what to do with themselves, the horror at the loss of the usual decorum is palpable.

But it is important to note that it really is absolute nonsense. There is just no rational reason for supposing such a thing. Clinton’s chief counsel Marc Elias is likewise bemused, acknowledging just how far through the looking glass we now are:’We are getting attacked for participating in a recount that we didn’t ask for by the man who won election but thinks there was massive fraud’. The cognitive dissonance is truly astounding.

A President Elect who is more, well, Presidential would have said something like ‘We welcome and applaud the efforts of all those working ensure fairness in our democracy and trust that a recount will validate the integrity of the American electoral process’. But Trump can’t help himself. He has to jump right back into the mud. It will be interesting to see if this remains his modus operandi, or if he learns to pick his battles.

Personally I think recounts like this should be a regular and automatic occurrence if the margin of victory for any candidate is below a certain point. Not because there is a great deal of fraud in the system, but because it increases confidence in institutions. In times such as these such confidence is precious indeed.