Kansas reaffirmed its overwhelming pro-abortion-rights vote after election officials completed a recount that never had any chance of changing the outcome but was sought by a pro-choice activist and an anti-abortion activist, making baseless claims. for fraud. Instead, the exercise provided a second victory for opponents of an amendment that would strip abortion rights from the state constitution. But the repetition of such a one-sided vote, rather than building credibility in the results, risks undermining confidence in the election because the process gave fringe, die-hard supporters of the amendment an opportunity to try to create an aura of uncertainty around the vote, while, in fact, none ever existed. A manual count in nine counties — including Johnson and Sedgwick, the state’s two largest — cost about $120,000 and burned countless hours as election officials scrambled to complete the painstaking process before Saturday’s deadline. Kansas voters rejected the amendment, dubbed Value Them Both by supporters, 59 percent to 41 percent by a margin of about 165,000 votes. The partial recount ultimately changed the result by less than 60 votes—a tiny fraction of the total vote that included ballots from more than 922,000 Kansans. Sedgwick County verified its results around 4:30 p.m. of Sunday. The county missed Saturday’s deadline, requesting an extension to review an apparent data anomaly – 86 fewer total ballots. It was the last county to verify its recount. “In this age of voter fraud hysteria it seems that no amount of evidence is enough to convince some people,” said Rick Hassen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the Securing Democracy Program at UCLA Law. The Kansas recount was requested last Friday by Melissa Levitt, a Colby resident who has testified in the Kansas Legislature about 2020 election conspiracy theories. Unfounded views of voter fraud have taken hold nationally — among others to some in Kansas – after President Donald Trump and his supporters falsely claimed the election was stolen. Hassen said voter confidence has eroded nationally as Trump and many other Republicans have continued to cling to false claims about the 2020 election for nearly two years. Leavitt eventually raised more than $50,000 online for the abortion count, but her main benefactor was Mark Gietzen, a longtime anti-abortion activist from Wichita. Gitgen also leads the Kansas Republican Convention, a far-right alternative to the traditional Republican Party. Leavitt initially requested a statewide recount, which Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab’s office said would cost about $230,000. Leavitt and Gietzen on Monday managed to pay just under $120,000, with Gietzen using a credit card for the Kansas Republican Convention and money from his own retirement account. The amount was enough to order a recount of nine counties: Johnson, Sedgwick, Shawnee, Douglas, Crawford, Harvey, Jefferson, Lyon and Thomas. The recount resulted in eight more votes in favor and 49 fewer votes against, spread across the nine counties. Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, the main group that opposed the amendment, welcomed the recount results. “Voters across the political spectrum want to protect women’s constitutional rights and freedom to make private medical decisions for themselves. We hope lawmakers will now listen to voters and take NO for an answer,” Ashley All, the group’s spokeswoman, said in a statement. The August 2nd election was — and is — a landslide victory for abortion rights advocates. Kansas was the first state to vote on abortion rights after the US Supreme Court in June overturned Roe v. Wade. President Joe Biden and national Democrats quickly seized on the result as evidence that voters generally support abortion rights and will vote on the issue. The election also produced extraordinary turnout in the primaries. About 48% of registered voters cast ballots. Leavitt’s decision to call for the recount — and Gietzen’s decision to fund it — baffled political observers. By comparison, President Ronald Reagan’s victory over Democrat Walter Modale in 1984 featured a similar margin of victory in the national popular vote. “You’re defaming one of the central tenets of our democracy, which is fair and free elections, and I just think that’s a bad precedent to set, whatever your cause,” said Sen. Tom Hawk, D-Manhattan. . the recount. Leavitt has largely declined to speak to reporters, but has posted videos on TikTok throughout the recount. Leavitt’s posts focus on vague claims about voter integrity concerns. It was reduced to a technical foul in a Cherokee County committee race as evidence of the statewide issues. Troy Hood, a political science professor at the University of Georgia who studies elections, said mistakes like this are usually isolated and not indicative of a broader problem. “This is exactly the kind of thing that causes greater fears than some people in the public. They think they have something specific they can point to,” Hood said. The delays in Sedgwick County and the fault in Cherokee County are likely to fuel conspiracy theorists for the foreseeable future. Gietzen, who funded the count, told The Star after the count was completed that he would not pay for the Sedgwick County count because of the delay. Gitchen said he will file a lawsuit Monday seeking a full statewide recount. “It was absolutely foolish for the clerk not to immediately stop and re-count, count everything,” Gitgen said, arguing that the state must prove that Cherokee County’s error was not widespread.
“He’s attacking our electoral system”
For Gietzen’s part, he previously acknowledged that a recount was unlikely to change the result, but nevertheless saw it as the beginning of an effort to look for fraud. He suggested that he and his allies would go door-to-door to confront voters. “The next step is to check the records of people who say they voted,” Gietzen said. “I don’t care if they voted yes or no, it makes no difference to me. I want to know if a person voted. So we’ll visit houses to see if anyone lives there – maybe 10 in each area.” State Rep. Stephanie Clayton, D-Overland Park, said the recount effort struck her as an attempt to punish counties that voted to protect abortion rights. “It seems insidious. It’s a two-pronged attack. It’s attacking our election system and it’s attacking, specifically, the counties that didn’t vote the way they wanted to,” he said. “They are creating unnecessary work for our already overburdened election workers in what I see as an attempt to jeopardize democracy itself.” Leavitt and Gietzen gained allies along the way from some in the anti-abortion community. Operation Rescue, a hard-line anti-abortion group, supported the recount and claimed, without evidence, that the only explanation for the landslide defeat is voter fraud. Gietzen has been associated with Operation Rescue since the ‘Summer of Mercy’ protests in 1991. “Sure, there were issues with mixed messaging and a lack of coalition building on the part of the Value Them Both campaign, but now information has come out that leads us to believe there may have been irregularities in the election process.” Operation Rescue president Troy Newman said in a news release. Kansans for Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group and the primary mover behind the amendment, and some Republican officials who supported the amendment distanced themselves from the recount effort last week, saying they remain laser-focused on the Nov. 8 general election. when incumbent Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly will face Republican candidate Derek Schmidt, the Kansas attorney general. “While Kansans have the right to request a recount, we knew it wasn’t going to change the results — and that’s why since August 2nd, we’ve been working to move the cause of life in Kansas forward, not backward.” , Mackenzie said. Haddix, spokeswoman for the Value Them Both Coalition and Kansans for Life, said in an email.
How Schwab Counties Handled the Recount
Schwab, the state’s top elections official, has faced criticism over his handling of the recount, which also exposed gray areas in Kansas law. Leavitt, and others seeking a recount, were allowed to change their recount request days after the deadline and wait to post their bonds. Kansas law required requests to be made by the end of the day Friday, Aug. 12, but Schwab’s office gave Leavitt until the end of the day Monday to provide the money. The law does not expressly require bonds to be provided at the same time a recount is requested. Schwab, an Olathe Republican, told reporters this Friday that the law is unclear. “We always interpret the law as pro-voter or pro-citizen, so we did the best we could,” Schwab said. Last week, the recount left election workers with extra work just as they were trying to wrap up work on the Aug. 2 primary. Instead of starting…
