Actress Alyssa Milano complained on Twitter Tuesday evening that an Ohio special election was too close to call because of Russian meddling.
The results in the closely-watched 12th District special election to replace retiring Rep. Pat Tiberi (R.) remain neck and neck a day later. Republican Troy Balderson holds a slight advantage over Democrat Danny O'Connor with 50.2 percent of the vote, a lead of only about 1,754 votes, but provisional ballots still need to be tallied.
But Green Party candidate Joe Manchik also received 1,127 votes, around 0.6 percent of total voters. An eccentric marijuana enthusiast who believes all Americans should be required to grow hemp, Manchik also believes he is descended from aliens from "a planet orbiting a star in the Pleiades star cluster located in the constellation of Taurus."
Milano, the star of "Charmed" and the upcoming Netflix series "Insatiable," cried foul about the votes Manchik was receiving, blaming "Russian meddling" instead.
You know what sucks?
Because of our unwillingness to pass policy that protects our election integrity, I immediately think the Green Party votes tonight are Russian meddling.
Why else would anyone cast a protest vote in Ohio when there’s so much at stake?#OH12
— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) August 8, 2018
The U.S. intelligence community believe Russian hackers managed to infiltrate several state and local electoral systems during the 2016 election, but a 2017 report from the Department of Homeland Security noted that "the types of systems we observed Russian actors targeting or compromising are not involved in vote tallying."