Kansas Megathread: Kobach and Kelly and Orman, Oh My!

[tmthforu94]

It would be hysterical if this ends in a tie.

They'd draw names out of a hat.

[tmthforu94]

Couple corrections:
- Colyer gains 4 votes in Elk County
- Kobach gains net 30 votes in Haskell County

Margin is currently 117

[tmthforu94]

https://twitter.com/thatelliotmetz/status/1027679216752623616

[tmthforu94]

https://twitter.com/carolinekctv5/status/1027681359005921280?s=21

Buckle your seatbelts. Count currently at Kobach +100, tomorrows SOS update should include new absentee numbers.

[tmthforu94]

A protracted recount battle with maybe a few court challenges thrown in would be fun.

This is why i prefer earlier primaries - good chance that this won't be settled until September. Every vote should be counted and I support a fair election, but this mess emphasizes the need to nominate Colyer, as Kelly is now going to have several weeks of extra preparation.

[tmthforu94]

I have twenty dollars placed in favor of Kobach on PredictIt - How's it looking right now?

Honestly I would say 50/50. ~100 votes can easily be made up and I expect Colyer to have the edge in provisional ballots, but at this point, who knows?

[tmthforu94]

Kobach agrees to recuse himself from the recount.

Wow, I did not see that coming.

Honestly, I did. This guy has presidential aspirations and I think he's smart enough to realize this would have bad optics both this year and in future elections. The positives far outweighed the negatives here, it really doesn't matter too much if Colyer scores a few points on this since the primary is already over.

[tmthforu94]

I have had a lot of people asking me what is going on and what will be happening going forward. Here is what I know:

- Throughout today, the SoS office will be posting updates online as they correct reporting errors. You can view updates here: https://ent.sos.ks.gov/kssos_ent.html. Politico is also keeping an updated county with an easier to read map: https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/kansas/

- Additional absentee ballots have to be received by today. I expect those numbers to come in early this evening. I don't have an idea on how many absentee ballots there will be, I heard Sedgwick has around 500 so a rough estimate would be around 2500 statewide, meaning around 1700 will be GOP.

- Starting next week, canvassing will begin in each county for provisional ballots. At this moment there are a reported 8,999 provisional ballots, so it is expected that around 6K of them will be GOP ballots. These happen between 8/13 and 8/20. The vast majority of counties will be canvassing on the 13th, though, so I'm thinking either that night or Tuesday morning we'll get the vast majority of those. This includes Sedgwick (Wichita) and Johnson Counties. Wyandotte (Kobach's best county) and Shawnee (Topeka) aren't canvassing until the 16th. I am not sure how those dates were determined and why every county isn't doing it on Monday.

- Requests for recounts must be made by August 17th. A little goofy since all of canvassing won't be complete, but I don't envision the margin to change too much between the 17th and 20th , only 7 counties canvass on those dates (these counties were basically a wash between Colyer and Kobach).

I will keep everyone posted as I learn new information, I am also going to keep an up-to-date (as possible) total on the first post of this thread. We're all going to be experts on Kansas voting laws by the end of this. 

[tmthforu94]

The SOS count is using the final reports given by each county and not the discrepancies that were found yesterday. Only the counties in dark gold (results complete) on the map are where changes have been made. This means that Thomas' 100 vote difference isn't included in that total.

You're right that Brownback wasn't mentioned too much during these primaries so it became more about "conservative vs. moderate" instead of "Pro-Brownback vs. Anti-Brownback." Moderates may have been less likely to vote since they didn't have a viable choice in the Governor's race, I'm not sure.

[tmthforu94]

Yeah, all of the big counties haven't reported yet, but Colyer isn't doing as well with these absentee votes as expected. This is only votes received yesterday or before, votes received today won't come in until Monday. I was hoping/expecting he would pull close to even today and then it would all come down to whoever wins the provisional votes.

[tmthforu94]

Updated totals on OP.

Usually 60-70% of provisional ballots are counted, so on the low end we're looking at around 3,600 additional votes. Colyer will need to win provisional votes by a little over 3% to pull ahead.

[tmthforu94]

The count is Kobach +110, there will not be weekend updates.

Monday will be a big day, as a majority of counties, including Sedgwick and Johnson, will canvas their provisional ballots. Additionally we will get numbers on the remaining absentee ballots that were received today. Colyer will need to do extremely well on Monday, if the margin stays around what it is now he is probably done.

TECHNICALLY, Kobach probably barely won the absentee votes that came in Tuesday-Thursday, so will probably win the ones that came in today. However, the big takeway from today that we'll probably see on the news will be that the margin has shrank by 81 votes (because of the Thomas county error).

[tmthforu94]

This isn’t pure speculation at this point, but I saw a former KS GOP official say that a majority of provisional ballots are people who thought there were registered GOP but were listed unaffiliated when they showed up. These votes are usually counted and then registered as GOP. I would imagine these voters would lean towards Colyer pretty heavily since they’re more likely to be moderate, and thus this is why a lot in the Colyer camp are confident they’ll take the lead back on Monday.

[tmthforu94]

This isn’t pure speculation at this point, but I saw a former KS GOP official say that a majority of provisional ballots are people who thought there were registered GOP but were listed unaffiliated when they showed up. These votes are usually counted and then registered as GOP. I would imagine these voters would lean towards Colyer pretty heavily since they’re more likely to be moderate, and thus this is why a lot in the Colyer camp are confident they’ll take the lead back on Monday.

Watch Kobach argue they shouldn’t be counted.

I’m already seeing that from his supporters.

Kansas law requires unaffiliated to declare with a party on primary day in order to vote. Then the voter would have to switch back to unaffiliated. Apparently poll workers will just give people a provisional ballot instead of having them fill out a change of party form. In the past those votes will still count, so I’m expecting they’ll count again this year, but if it changes the outcome, expect Kobach to sue.

[tmthforu94]

Quit hijacking my state’s thread. We don’t get attention that often so I’d like for this to stay focused on what’s actually happening in Kansas.

[tmthforu94]

https://twitter.com/BryanLowry3/status/1028872676524347392

Court challenge in 3...2...1...

Yeah, Colyer's legal counsel has already issued a statement saying they disagree with this. Obviously politics are at play - everyone knows that Colyer would benefit if the votes ARE counted, Kobach if they are NOT.

Just to give everyone an idea on how close this race is, if JoCo's provisional ballots break as the county has votes, the margin would narrow to 39 votes statewide.

[tmthforu94]

Here we go again, provisional ballots are starting to come into KS SOS site. Will update main post as they come in. 112 vote margin right now.

[tmthforu94]

Saline County comes in at 31 votes for Colyer, 22 for Kobach. For reference, Colyer won the county 47-36% so a slight improvement for him.

[tmthforu94]

Rice County comes in, Colyer gains 10 votes, Kobach gains 5.

MARGIN: KOBACH +99

[tmthforu94]

We need a progress map!

Sadly, the SoS map doesn't indicate who has reported and who hasn't

Yeah, I briefly thought of trying to copy down all of the numbers now and look for variances later, but too complicated and too much work. I wish they did what they did on Friday - move all counties to incomplete. I'll ask on Twitter! Smaller counties will probably mostly be a wash, we'll have a pretty good idea what is going to happen from the big counties.

One of my friends said every county that has sent in so far (only a handful) has been an increase for Colyer. However, Kobach is currently up big in Butler County (he won by 16%) and is going to increase his votes there.

[tmthforu94]

https://ent.sos.ks.gov/

It is doing shading for counties, you need to clear your browser cookies for it to display correctly. 18 counties in so far.

[tmthforu94]

I was just thinking if there is an constitutionality of just putting "Republican Candidate" on the ballot, but I think doing so would essentially hand the election to Kelly.

A tweet I saw: "If an unaffiliated voter didn't declare a party, how were they given the correct (R or D) ballot?" Expect that to be Colyer's opening argument. The unaffiliated voters who were directed to just fill out a provisional ballot and didn't declare a party aren't counting...for now. Which IMHO is wrong as they were directed by poll workers to do so. Just like it is wrong to not count votes where the postmark is smudged as that wasn't the fault of the voter.

The margin is 168. Keep in mind though that we're probably looking at around 1k of those non-affiliated votes and those are expected to be heavily for Colyer, hence the drama surrounding them. Colyer needs to keep it close in Sedgwick and get a big haul in JoCo.

[tmthforu94]

181.The lions share of the votes are still coming in, and as I said in my last post, the results of litigation could still alter the race, but Colyer really needs to be making up some votes and he isn't doing it.

[tmthforu94]

Another county has already reported this morning, the margin is up to 212. In addition to getting reports from the big counties that weren't able to finish yesterday (mainly Sedgwick and Johnson, 12 total), the following counties will canvas today:
Allen
Atchison
Brown
Cowley
Crawford
Decatur
Franklin
Hamilton
Leavenworth
Miami
Morris
Smith
Trego
Wallace

Not great results for Colyer so far, his camp was expecting to gain votes from canvassing, not lose them. He probably needs to break even in Sedgwick and exceed current numbers in JoCo, and even then he still may be behind.

There's a good chance the election could come down to those unaffiliated voters who didn't fill out a declaration of party form. These votes are expected to tilt heavily towards Colyer as his best group in polling was moderates/independent-leaning voters. I'd say the margin probably needs to be under 150 at least for that to affect the outcome.

[tmthforu94]

Kobach gains 94 votes from Sedgwick, now leads statewide by 296. JoCo won't be reporting until 4 PM, Colyer needs a miracle.