Count goes on in Kansas primary
GOP challenger leads by 121 votes
TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer demanded Thursday that Secretary of State Kris Kobach stop advising county elections officials while their battle for the Republican nomination for governor hangs in the balance, accusing him of giving them information “inconsistent with Kansas law.”
The close contest between the embattled governor and a conservative lightning rod took an acrimonious turn as Kobach’s already tiny lead shrunk from 191 votes to just 121 out of 311,000 ballots cast after two counties reported discrepancies in their initial tallies.
The counting is not complete because state law says mail-in ballots that are postmarked Tuesday can be accepted by the counties as late as Friday. And county officials still must review perhaps several thousand provisional ballots, which are given to voters when their eligibility is in question. They have until Aug. 20 to finish.
Colyer released a letter after his campaign announced that it had set up a “voting integrity” hotline and urged people to report their complaints about the election. Colyer spokesman Kendall Marr said it received “countless” reports, saying he personally knows of several dozen.
“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 primary election process,” Colyer said in his letter to Kobach.
As secretary of state, Kobach is the state’s top elections official.