The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
● KS-Gov: On Thursday, election officials in Thomas County announced that they'd discovered an error by the secretary of state's office that had initially cost Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer 100 votes in Tuesday's incredibly tight GOP primary with Secretary of State Kris Kobach (the state transcribed Thomas' tally for Colyer as 422 votes rather than 522). However, another error discovered later in the day netted Kobach 30 votes in Haskell County. But wait! Another discrepancy, not yet resolved as of this writing, was discovered in Wyandotte County even later in the day. With both confirmed errors corrected, Kobach's lead over Colyer goes from 191 votes to just 121. These kinds of typos are fairly common in elections, but they don't attract much public attention unless the race is tight.
Campaign ActionNo matter what, it's going to take a while for Republicans to learn who won on Tuesday. There are still between 8,000 and 10,000 provisional ballots left to count (though not all of them will be for the GOP primary). State law also allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive by Friday, so we still don't know how many of those votes are out. The director of Kansas' election office says there will be a new statewide vote tally Friday that will include mail-in ballots, but not provisional votes.
The counties will be holding a canvas to review their provisional ballots over the next several days. Johnson and Sedgwick Counties will review their combined 3,700 provisional ballots on Monday, but two other large counties, Wyandotte and Shawnee, won't hold their canvasing meetings until Aug. 16. The deadline for counties to finish their canvas is Aug. 20.
There is no automatic recount in Kansas, but the trailing candidate may request one after counties have counted their mail-in and provisional ballots: The deadline to make this request is Aug. 17. The recount would be finished five days after it is requested, and the State Board of Canvassers (which is made up of Colyer, Kobach, and the attorney general) would certify the results by Aug. 31.
While Kobach initially said Wednesday that he wouldn’t recuse himself from overseeing a recount, he changed his tune Thursday evening. Kobach, while insisting that his role in the process was purely symbolic, told CNN he’d “be happy to” recuse himself if Colyer wanted, and would formally do so on Friday. Hours before, after the first voting discrepancy was announced in Thomas County, the governor had sent a letter to Kobach asking him to step aside. Whomever emerges with the GOP nomination when all is said and done will face Democratic state Sen. Laura Kelly and wealthy independent Greg Orman.