Category Archives: recounts

“Our Analysis of Statewide Election Recounts 2003-2023”

FairVote:

Conducting election recounts to ensure fair, accurate, and genuine democratic outcomes is a critical component of effective election administration. Trust in elections requires trust in a jurisdiction’s recount process. It is an ongoing learning experience for election administrators to conduct efficient and reputable recounts, as well as to determine when victory margins and data from post-election audits should trigger a recount. In this report, we quantify various aspects of statewide recounts in the United States between 2000 and 2023, including how often they occur, how often they change outcomes, and how much vote totals change. We also use this analysis to make recommendations for policymakers on recount laws. Our main findings are:

  • Statewide recounts are rare: Out of the 6,929 statewide general elections between 2000 and 2023, there were 36 statewide recounts. In other words, there was one recount for every 192 statewide elections.
  • Outcome reversals are even rarer: Recounts resulted in only three reversals, or one out of every 2,310 statewide elections. All three reversals occurred when the initial margin was less than 0.06% of all votes cast for the top two candidates. The last statewide recount reversal was the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota. 
  • Recounts tend to shift only a small number of votes: Statewide recounts resulted in an average margin shift of 551 votes between the frontrunners, representing 0.03% of the vote. Recounts typically widen the gap between the top two candidates instead of decreasing it. 
  • States should require automatic recounts in close races: When the margin is very close, a recount should occur automatically without a candidate or voters having to petition for one. A threshold of 0.1% to trigger an automatic recount is sufficient to capture all races that are close enough for an outcome reversal to be plausible. 
  • A threshold for campaign-funded recounts should be established to prevent frivolous recounts: The recent trend of recounts for races with no realistic possibility of an outcome reversal reveals a flaw in the recount statutes in many states. Most states that allow campaign-requested recounts have no upper limit on when these recounts may be requested. Allowing campaign-requested recounts only for close races would prevent frivolous recounts and prevent a decline in voter confidence in our elections. 
  • Recount laws should go hand-in-hand with rigorous post-election audit procedures: Post-election audits should be tailored to the margins in each race, and the number of audited ballots should increase in relation to the percentage of discrepancies found as the audit progresses.
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The hand counted ballot crisis narrowly averted for 2024

A few weeks ago, a USA Today story entitled “Democrats propose voting rights bill to counter Georgia’s election changes and others” was essentially a press release. It offered no engagement with the text of the proposed bill, labeled the “Voter Empowerment Act of 2024,” beyond repeating what the proponents said about it.

This bill is hardly new. Its released text shows it’s a recycle bill from previous sessions. But I want to highlight one provision of this bill that has received no media attention:

(iii) MANUAL COUNTING REQUIREMENTS FOR RECOUNTS AND AUDITS.—(I) Each paper ballot used pursuant to clause (i) shall be suitable for a manual audit, and shall be counted by hand in any recount or audit conducted with respect to any election for Federal office.

(II) In the event of any inconsistencies or irregularities between any electronic vote tallies and the vote tallies determined by counting by hand the individual, durable, voter-verified paper ballots used pursuant to clause (i), and subject to subparagraph (B), the individual, durable, voter-verified paper ballots shall be the true and correct record of the votes cast.

The proposed bill would compel every state to use hand count procedures for any “recount” in any federal election. As someone involved in a recount in a congressional election in 2020, I can assure you that if we were required to follow this rule, our recount would have moved from about 60 hours to complete to roughly 250 hours to complete–and likely miss state deadlines in the process.

In Georgia’s recount in the 2020 presidential election, it’s deeply unlikely it would have been able to recount in a timely fashion, and certainly not to meet the deadlines now fixed by the Electoral Count Reform Act.

Elements of the Voter Empowerment Act were components of the Freedom to Vote Act, which this recent Center for American Progress piece promotes. CAP there complains, “the legislation has been blocked in the U.S. Senate by a minority of members through the use of the filibuster.”

Quite true–and mercifully so, because the Freedom to Vote Act in the 117th Congress has the same hand count rules baked into the statute (sec. 3902, if you want to look).

One problem with major log-rolled bills is an inattention to detail about how its many individual components work. Without the kind of ordinary process of legislative hearings to give consideration to its many working parts, the bill simply becomes a symbol of something greater–and it could become a true nightmare if some portions of it were adopted. (Jessica Huseman had similar concerns in a piece in 2021.)

But it shows how close we were to compulsory hand counts in any recount this presidential election–and how some in Congress are still pushing for it. I should note that this is not a universal sentiment–some reformers, long ago, support hand counts for recounts. But there is extensive literature and academic research resulting in opposition to manual tallies and helpful news summaries. Some might distinguish between the count and the recount–but, if manual tallies are more time-consuming, more costly, and less accurate than machine tabulation, it’s hard to know why those negatives are improved in a recount instead of the original canvass. (And, of course, jurisdictions do allow limited manual counts if, say, a machine malfunctions and is unable to read the ballots–that’s different in kind.)

So, perhaps the next time these bills are recycled in the next Congress, some of these provisions might be removed. And, perhaps some–any–critical scrutiny of bills would be helpful when they are introduced.

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“WA GOP sues King County Elections over commissioner of public lands primary results”

Seattle Times:

The state Republican Party filed a lawsuit challenging King County’s use of an online tool to allow voters to fix their challenged ballots, mostly with signature issues.

The complaint is the latest development in a monthlong saga to determine who will compete with former Republican U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler to become the next state commissioner of public lands. The lawsuit was first reported by KUOW.

The primary election for lands commissioner came down to a hand recount after only 51 votes (of 1.9 million) separated King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove, a Democrat, and GOP-endorsed Sue Kuehl Pederson. The recount found Kuehl Pederson losing to Upthegrove by 49 votes.

In 2022, Herrera Beutler lost her seat as a representative in Southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District after she voted the year before impeach former President Donald Trump over his role in inciting the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021….

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Litigation Stalls Utah’s Republican Primary for 2nd Congressional District

AP News:

“Results of a recount completed Monday in the Republican primary for Utah’s 2nd Congressional District showed incumbent U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy still narrowly leads her opponent, who preemptively filed a lawsuit contesting the results.

The Associated Press is not calling the race until the resolution of a pending legal challenge from Colby Jenkins that asks judges to decide whether 1,171 additional ballots that were disqualified for late postmarking should be counted.”

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“Nevada county reverses controversial vote and certifies two recounts while legal action looms”

AP: “The 4-1 decision overturns last week’s vote against certifying election recount results from June’s primary in the politically mixed swath of northern Nevada [Washoe County], which includes Reno. The rare move had potential implications for how the November elections could play out in one of the nation’s most important swing counties.”

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“Virginia certifies John McGuire as primary winner over Rep. Bob Good, who says he’ll seek a recount”

AP:

The Virginia State Board of Elections on Tuesday certified the apparent narrow defeat of Republican Rep. Bob Good, one of America’s most conservative congressmen, to a challenger endorsed by former President Donald Trump in the state’s June 18 primaries.

The board’s unanimous vote to certify the results does not end the matter, though. Good, who chairs the hard-right House Freedom Caucus in Congress, has said he will seek a recount now that the state has declared his opponent, state Sen. John McGuire, the winner of the primary in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District.

The margin of victory certified by the electoral board was roughly 375 votes out of nearly 63,000 ballots cast, or 0.6 percentage points. That falls within the 1% margin allowing a recount to be requested. But because the margin is larger than 0.5 percentage points, Good will be required to pay for the cost of a recount himself.

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Georgia County Approves Automatic Hand Recounts

The Guardian:

A rural Georgia elections office run by Republicans who promote falsehoods about the 2020 election approved a motion on Monday to institute automatic hand recounts for all future elections.

The decision will require elections staff in Spalding county to hand-count each ballot, then compare those vote totals with totals reached by voting tabulation machines provided by the secretary of state. Hand counts slow certification of election results and are less reliable than tabulations carried out by machines….

Outside Georgia, other jurisdictions have tried to move to hand-counting since the 2020 election, including Cochise county, ArizonaNye county, Nevada; and Shasta county, California.

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Breaking: Kari Lake Loses Election Contest in Arizona Governor’s Race (Link to opinion)

The trial judge in this opinion found no misconduct or illegal conduct in signature verification of absentee ballots. Kari Lake loses her election contest against Katie Hobbs for Arizona’s gubernatorial race on her final remaining issues.

She can appeal, but an appeal is unlikely to succeed given these factual findings.

H/t Yvonne Wingett Sanchez

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Deeeeeeeep dive into Pinal County 2022 election counting

The final tally in the 2022 Arizona Attorney General’s race showed a margin of 280 votes out of more than 2.5 million cast — and any race that close is going to get an awful lot of scrutiny.  That’s a closer margin than in the original count: a statewide recount turned up a discrepancy of about 500 votes in Pinal County, attributed to human error.

Now Votebeat Arizona has an in-depth, long-form piece on that error – including counting problems caught the second time around that really should have been caught and reconciled the first time.

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“Arizona Supreme Court rejects most of Kari Lake’s election challenge”

Arizona Republic:

Arizona’s top court has declined to hear Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s challenge to her election loss, but kept the case alive by sending one of Lake’s claims back to a county judge to review.

Lake asked the Arizona Supreme Court to consider her case after a Maricopa County judge and state appeals court rejected her claims that she was the rightful governor, or that a new election should take place.

The former television news anchor made seven legal claims in her case, six of which the state’s top court said were properly dismissed by lower courts, according to an opinion released Wednesday written by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel.

Those included claims that tens of thousands of ballots were “injected” into the election, which Lake called an “undisputed fact” in her lawsuit, as well as alleging that problems with tabulation machines disenfranchised “thousands” of voters.

The opinion said Lake’s challenges were “insufficient to warrant the requested relief under Arizona or federal law.”

But the sixth legal claim, which has to do with Lake’s allegation that Maricopa County did not follow signature verification procedures, must receive a second look by a county judge, the court ordered. The county and appeals courts interpreted Lake’s signature-related challenge as applying to the policies themselves, not how the policies were applied in 2022, and dismissed her claim based on grounds that she filed her legal challenge too late.

But that was an error, the Supreme Court said, noting, “Lake could not have brought this challenge before the election.”…

You can find the opinion here, via Arizona’s Law.

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Breaking: Kari Lake’s Election Contest Fails in Arizona Because of Utter Failure of Proof

An Arizona trial court has ruled that Kari Lake’s attempt to contest the results of the Arizona gubernatorial election has failed because Lake utterly failed to prove that there was any intentional misconduct, much less misconduct that could have affected the outcome of the election:

It bears mentioning that because of the requested remedy – setting aside the result of the election – the question that is before the Court is of monumental importance to every voter. The margin of victory as reported by the official canvass is 17,117 votes – beyond the scope of a
statutorily required recount. A court setting such a margin aside, as far as the Court is able to determine, has never been done in the history of the United States. This challenge also comes after a hotly contested gubernatorial race and an ongoing tumult over election procedures and legitimacy – a far less uncommon occurrence in this country. See e.g., Hunt, supra. This Court acknowledges the anger and frustration of voters who were subjected to inconvenience and confusion at voter centers as technical problems arose during the 2022 General Election.


But this Court’s duty is not solely to incline an ear to public outcry. It is to subject Plaintiff’s claims and Defendants’ actions to the light of the courtroom and scrutiny of the law. See Winsor v. Hunt, 29 Ariz. 504, 512 (1926) (“It is the boast of American democracy that this is a government of laws, and not of men.”) And so, the Court begins with a review of the evidence….

After what I consider to be an overly charitable review of the evidence put on by Lake, and bending over backwards to accept the good faith of Lake’s witnesses, the court found no clear and convincing evidence of either official misconduct or anything that would call Hobb’s victory into question.

The important point here is that Lake got her day in court. She had a chance to prove her allegations and utterly, utterly failed. She cannot claim that she didn’t get a fair shot to make her case. Like Trump in 2020, Lake has nothing but inadvertent administrative errors that show neither intentional misconduct nor anything that could have swung the outcome of the case.

I don’t expect this ruling (or the likely appeal and affirmance of this ruling) to stop Lake from lying. But no one should give her claims any credence.

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“No evidence of misconduct in first day of Kari Lake election-challenge trial”

Arizona Republic:

The first day of an evidence trial based on an election-challenge lawsuit by Republican governor candidate Kari Lake raised plentiful suspicions but did not reveal evidence of the misconduct she alleged.

Lake, a Republican endorsed by former President Donald Trump, alleges in her suit that malicious acts by election officials caused “vast numbers of illegal votes” to infect the election and that Democrat Katie Hobbs was wrongfully declared the winner.

Election results showed that Hobbs beat Lake by about 17,000 votes in the Nov. 8 election. After basing her campaign on 2020 election conspiracy theories, Lake’s best chance of taking office now rests on convincing a judge she was robbed of a rightful victory.

Roughly seven hours of court proceedings on Wednesday made it clear how difficult that will be.

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