Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach announced late Thursday he will recuse himself from the continued process of counting votes in the Republican primary race against incumbent Gov. Jeff Colyer following the governor’s call for him to do so earlier in the day.
“Yeah, we’ll be formally answering his request tomorrow. But I’ll give you a heads-up. Yes, I’ll be happy to recuse myself. But as I say, it really doesn’t make any difference. My office doesn’t count the votes,” Kobach told CNN host Chris Cuomo.
Colyer demanded Thursday that Kobach not play any role in overseeing the process of counting ballots in their race. He said Kobach’s office gave local election officials instruction that was “inconsistent with Kansas law.”
Colyer wrote Kobach a letter Thursday asking him to instead rely on Attorney General Derek Schmidt to give local officials guidance in how to proceed.
“It has come to my attention that your office is giving advice to county election officials — as recently as a conference call yesterday — and you are making public statements on national television which are inconsistent with Kansas law and may serve to suppress the vote in the ongoing Kansas primary election process,” Colyer wrote, according to a copy of the letter.
“Accordingly, I hereby request that you recuse yourself from rendering further advice on these matters and that you designate the Attorney General of Kansas to provide this function,” he added.
Just a day earlier, Kobach had said he had no plans to recuse himself from overseeing a potential recount.
“Well, if there’s a recount, the secretary of state doesn’t actually do any counting. The recounting is actually done by county election officials,” Kobach told Fox News. “So, really, all the secretary of state does is just receive the numbers from the county. So there’s not really a need to recuse.”
But by Thursday afternoon, Kobach’s 191-vote lead shrank by half after officials in Thomas County reported a discrepancy during a standard review of ballot totals.
Whoever wins, whether by recount or not, will go on to face Democratic state Sen. Laura Kelly in November.
