Kansas has not started manual vote counting for abortion rights

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas hasn’t started a statewide manual recount of this month’s swing vote for abortion rights because abortion opponents seeking it haven’t shown they can cover the costs. costs of an effort that do not change the result.

The state elections director gave a western Kansas woman until 5 p.m. Monday to provide cash, a valid check or a credit card with enough balance to cover the $229,000 in costs expected for the state’s 105 counties. The recount request came Friday from Melissa Leavitt, a Colby election conspiracy promoter, but Mark Gietzen, a far-right anti-abortion activist from Wichita, has agreed to help pay for the recount.

Voters on August 2 overwhelmingly rejected a proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution that would have allowed the Republican-controlled Legislature to further restrict or ban abortion. The “no” side prevailed by 18 percentage points, or 165,000 votes.

There has been no evidence of significant problems with the election. Baseless election conspiracies have been widely circulated in the US, particularly among supporters of former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly false claims that he lost the 2020 election through fraud.

The secretary of state’s office sent an email from elections director Bryan Caskey to Leavitt, saying she provided Gietzen’s “financial assets” as a bond to cover recount costs. Caskey rejected that promise, but told Leavitt that he could limit her recount request to specific counties to reduce potential costs.

Leavitt did not immediately respond to a phone message Monday morning seeking comment. Gietzen told The Associated Press that she hoped to use her house as collateral for a bond, without being more specific about what form it would take.

“We’re working on it,” Gietzen said.

Leavitt has an online fundraising effort and had received more than $33,000 in donations as of Monday morning. Records available online from Sedgwick County, Wichita’s home, showed the appraised value of Gietzen’s home was less than $47,000.

Kansas law says the person seeking a recount pays for it unless the result changes, in which case the counties do. The law also gives counties until 5 p.m. Wednesday to complete a recount.

Some counties were still compiling final results due Monday, reviewing provisional ballots cast by voters when poll workers weren’t sure if they were eligible.

Those counties included Douglas County in northeast Kansas, which is home to the main campus of the University of Kansas, where initial results showed 81% of voters had rejected the proposed abortion amendment. County Clerk Jamie Shew, an elected Democrat, said he has made plans to bring 18 to 20 people to do the count beginning Tuesday.

“All of us are moving forward with our plans,” Shew said of county election officials. “When they tell us to start, we start.”

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Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna

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