Kansas 2022 Primary Election Recount

Lawsuit filed by Mark S. Gietzen — the leader of the far-right PAC Kansas Republican Assembly and anti-abortion group Kansas Coalition for Life — against Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab (R) requesting a hand recount and “revote, where necessary,” of Kansas’ Aug. 2, 2022 primary election. The plaintiff alleges that the “discovery of a malicious computer virus, which has made its way past all state election security measures, gives rise to the possibility that every Primary race outcome, is actually the opposite of what is being reported.”  The plaintiff bases his argument on a programming glitch in a county commissioners’ race in Cherokee County in which candidate vote totals were inadvertently switched and asserts that “replicas of the virus [could be] in some, or in most, or in every County in Kansas.” The plaintiff asks the court to order the Kansas secretary of state to rerun the election using solely hand-marked paper ballots in counties that used electronic voting systems and to conduct a “legitimate and legal hand-recount of every race in Kansas that was part of the August 2 Primary Election.” Additionally, the plaintiff requests that the court require the state to “promptly repair and improve all existing electronic election system security measures in the entire Kansas Electronic Voting system, or, failing that…plan a Kansas General Election using only hand-marked paper ballots, that are hand-counted in each precinct across the state of Kansas.”

Last updated: September 19, 2022 2:48 pm EST