TOPEKA – Melissa Leavitt says her ability to raise money to pay for a statewide recount on the abortion rights constitutional amendment will “have a lot to do with God moving in people’s lives.”
Leavitt ordered the recount before Friday’s 5 p.m. deadline after launching an online fundraiser. As of Saturday morning, she had raised less than $3,000 toward a goal of $275,000. However, the Kansas City Star reported that she had posted a $200,000 bond with the Secretary of State’s Office.
The candidates also called for recounts in the state treasurer’s race, where the current lead for the GOP nomination is 409 votes, and a legislative race in western Kansas.
Preliminary results from the August 2 election show that more than 920,000 Kansans voted for the constitutional amendment, which would have removed the right to reproductive health care in Kansas and given the legislature the authority to completely ban abortion without exception. Voters rejected the amendment by a 59-41 margin with 165,389 more “no” votes than “yes” votes.
The Associated Press identified Leavitt as a resident of Colby in western Kansas. Leavitt said in online posts that she is an advocate for election integrity.
“I have no idea if 165,000 votes can swing a state, but I don’t think it’s impossible,” she said in a TikTok video posted early Saturday. “However, the data we get from doing a nationwide hand count would tell us a lot.”
Leavitt said data from a manual recount will draw attention to whether Kansas used car error rates are meeting federal standards.
“I’m just going to say that the next 48 hours is going to be a lot about God moving in people’s lives,” Leavitt said in the TikTok video. “And if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen and if it’s not going to happen, it’s not going to happen. But I am praying. I’m praying we can make it.”
The Secretary of State’s office has said that elections in Kansas are accurate and secure. The audits so far have revealed normal irregularities, the director of state elections said in a press conference.
Friday was the deadline to request a recount, but three of the four largest counties in Kansas have yet to have their votes certified, with about 20,000 provisional ballots still to be reviewed. Johnson, Sedgwick and Shawnee counties will canvass Monday.
The person requesting the recount is responsible for the cost, which is determined by election officials in each county.
A spokeswoman for the Secretary of State’s Office said it would provide information about all recounts that had been requested, and then did not respond to an inquiry when it did not.
State Sen. Caryn Tyson, who trails state Rep. Steven Johnson by a narrow margin in the GOP primary for state treasurer, said in a news release that she had ordered a recount. It identified 55 rural counties that would be manually recounted at an estimated cost of nearly $42,000.
Tyson said the recount is “based on discrepancies in audit results, audit results not being made available, malfunctioning voting equipment and/or incorrect ballot rotation.”
Rep. Tatum Lee-Hahn, a Republican from Ness City, requested a hand recount in the nine counties in her district, a reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal said on Twitter.
Rep. Jim Minnix, R-Scott City, defeated Lee-Hahn by a vote total of 4,060 votes to 2,771. The two incumbents moved to the same district as part of the redistricting process earlier this year.
Lee-Hahn, who promotes false information about voter fraud, said in a post on her campaign Facebook page: “We are at war, my friends. The word and worship is our war!”
She also welcomed Leavitt’s request for a recount on the abortion amendment.
“Are we honestly so naive to think that the entire nation watching this amendment vote and covered by every national news outlet last week didn’t have the potential to be fraudulent based on what we’ve seen the deep state of doing to President Trump just this week?” Lee-Hahn said on her campaign Facebook page.
