Secretary of State Kris Kobach won the Republican nomination for Kansas governor Tuesday after Gov. Jeff Colyer conceded following a week of stunning twists in the razor-thin contest.
The concession came after Kobach widened his lead to more than 300 votes with the counting of provisional ballots in Johnson and Sedgwick counties. Johnson County had been seen as a bulwark in Colyer’s effort to overtake Kobach.
Colyer conceded in an evening news conference from the Statehouse, where he said he wouldn’t ask for a recount or challenge the election results in court….
Colyer no doubt concluded the election was beyond the margin of litigation. But the many flaws in Kansas’s election system—especially unclear rules about the treatment of certain provisional ballots and the conflict of interest in the system—were exposed by the contest.