Automatic recount? If Kentucky governor election is close enough, new law kicks in

If recent polling is any indication of the final result for this year’s gubernatorial election, it’s possible Kentucky’s governor election could be in for a recount.

As a result of a provision in a big election reform package passed in 2021, the state now mandates a recount if the final result is closer than 0.5 percentage points. That means that a recount would have automatically occurred in 2019, when Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear defeated former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.

It could come into play if the latest poll from Emerson College/FOX56, which showed Beshear polling neck-and-neck with attorney general and GOP candidate Daniel Cameron, matches the actual result.

The recount law was tucked in a massive elections package – one that was widely lauded as an example of expanding voting rights and access – passed in 2021. That bill, House Bill 574, is best known for expanding voting access, allowing for three days of no excuse early in-person voting.

The bill’s passage was notable for its bipartisan support – it was backed by both Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams and Beshear – and its expansion of voting rights in the context of challenges to the 2020 presidential election. Kentucky was the only state with a Republican-led legislature to expand voting rights in 2021, according to the New York Times.

The bill addressed integrity issues by spurring the process for removing voters who died or moved out of Kentucky from the rolls, among other things.

Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, a key member of the legislature who works on election-related bills, said the provision mandating recounts was put into the bill in a Senate committee substitute as a “collective decision” among Senate Republicans.

He said the move was informed less by Bevin’s close call than by several legislators – in 2018, Rep. Nancy Tate, R-Brandenburg won by just six votes and Rep. DJ Johnson, R-Owensboro, lost the seat he currently holds by just one vote.

“There’d been a number of close elections, and there was a general consensus in something that close that the voters and candidates deserved assurances that the result they were getting was the accurate one,” Thayer said.

Recounts are often confused with recanvasses, and are comparatively more intensive. Recanvassing is a process of checking vote tabulations with county clerks working to ensure the numbers sent to the State Board of Elections on Election Night are correct. Recounting involves the examination of each ballot.

There’s no official estimate on the cost of a statewide recount, but Taylor Brown, State Board of Elections general counsel, said it could cost “up to a million” dollars. Michon Lindstrom, spokesperson for Adams, said it could cost as much as $2 million.

Exactly how a recount would occur is not in the new statute, according to Brown. Because of that, a working group of members from the State Board of Elections, the Secretary of State’s office and the Kentucky County Clerk’s Association have been meeting since September to draft a proposal for the recount procedure.

Brown said the group is working to finalize a recommendation to do the recount using machines should the law kick into effect. The reason for that is primary timing. The law states the recount “must be held no later than the second Tuesday following the election and be completed within fourteen days, Sundays excluded.” Another deadline: the Kentucky Constitution mandates that the next governor will take their oath of office on Dec. 12.

The recount portion of the law applies to all statewide offices, members of the General Assembly and Kentucky members of Congress and the U.S. Senate. It came into play recently in the Lexington area. House Minority Caucus Chair Cherlynn Stevenson, D-Lexington, moved her margin up from 35 votes to 37 votes following an automatic recount that took place in her narrow win over Republican challenger Jim Coleman last year. The Fayette County portion of Stevenson’s 88th House District recounted its ballots via machine and the Scott County portion recounted its portion of the district by hand.

Before the passage of the new law, an official election contest had to be filed and then approved by the General Assembly for a recount took place. Bevin flirted with the idea in 2019, but conceded the election after a recanvass did not change the 5,136-vote margin.

In 2015, the race for the GOP nomination in the governor’s race was so close between Bevin and Rep. James Comer, who now represents Kentucky’s 1st Congressional District, that Comer asked for a recanvass. After a recanvass did not change Bevin’s margin of victory, Comer conceded.

While the current governor’s race recently polled close, public polling on any of the down-ballot races has been scant.