LEXINGTON, Ky. — A handful of Republican candidates who lost primaries in May are asking for recounts, even in races where some of them lost by several thousand votes.
One problem for them: cost.
Recount costs are projected by local and state officials to amount to several thousand dollars, and the petitioners are none too happy about it. Per state law, any challenger must pay a bond set by a local circuit judge.
Judges have set bond amounts to be paid by two of the six petitioners, if they want to go through with the recount efforts, at more than $21,000.
A recount effort in Louisville’s 3rd Congressional District primary, according to the Courier-Journal, would cost one candidate a $375,000 bond. State Board of Elections Attorney Taylor Brown said a similar challenge in the 5th District, where a candidate lost by more than 68,000 votes, would cost six figures.
The price tags are high, according to circuit court judges that have set bonds for petitioners Bridgette Ehly and Courtney Gilbert, because of staffing, security, fuel and hauling equipment to move the voting machines, among other expenses.
Recounts, by and large, are rare. Brown called it “unheard of” to have six recount requests filed during one election cycle, let alone just the primary season.
According to Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson Michon Lindstrom, to the office’s knowledge a recount has never changed the result of a state or Congressional District race in Kentucky.
In 2018, a single-vote statehouse victory by former Owensboro Democratic representative Jim Glenn was recounted but the challenge was later dropped.
However, changing the outcome of the race is not necessarily the objective of the petitioners. Ehly — who lost to House Speaker David Osborne, a Republican, by nearly 2,200 votes or 36 percentage points — said a recount would be in line with her campaign promise to “check the tech” on voting machines.
None of the six petitioners, who align with the “liberty” wing of the state GOP, have alleged any foul play in their motions thus far.
Ehly and Gilbert — the sister of Sen. Adrienne Southworth who lost to House Appropriations & Revenue Committee Vice Chair Brandon Reed, a Republican, by a similarly wide margin — expressed in a news release their dismay at the “the full force and cost of bureaucracy” for recount efforts.
Other candidates mentioned in the release, sent initially by Ehly, who lost but petitioned for a recount, include state representative hopeful Jacob Clark, 5th Congressional District candidate Gerardo Serrano and Northern Kentucky senate challenger Jessica Neal.
Among that group, Neal’s race was the closest. She lost to Shelley Funke Frommeyer by three percentage points. Rhonda Palazzo is the sixth candidate seeking a recount, but was not named in the press release; she lost a bid for GOP nomination to the 3rd Congressional District by only 58 votes, or 0.1 percentage points.
Clark asked why state officials implemented a law ensuring that there’s a paper trail of ballots, then “shut down anyone who tries to use the papers for their intended purpose.”
Lindstrom said that the state was not trying to “shut down” anyone.
“Our office supports the right of candidates to request recounts, but the legal process must be followed, including adequate bond to cover security costs,” Lindstrom said, adding that the closeness of a race is not a factor for judges setting their bond amounts.
Brown, in motions filed against very similar petitions across the state, pointed out that the petitioners did not name their opponents as is required.
Adams, who via a new state law now leads the state’s board of elections, has followed the petitions with a plea to the General Assembly to pass a bill that would prohibit “frivolous” recounts. Such a bill would only allow recounts to take place in contests decided by one percentage point or less, Adams said.
The secretary of state spoke harshly of the “motley crew” of losing candidates asking for a recount.
“It’s bad enough that a motley crew of candidates who lost by landslides are demanding recounts; worse, they want taxpayers to subsidize this absurdity — they are asking presiding judges to set their bond artificially low,” Adams said. “Hard-working Kentuckians facing record inflation should not be forced to pay for the circus proposed by these conspiracy theorists, whose only goal is to undermine our democracy.”
Gilbert initially asked a judge in her native Larue County to post her recount bond at $2,000. Judges in her case and Ehly’s pointed to significant costs to local law enforcement and clerks’ offices in justifying the expensive bond amounts.
For their part, the petitioners said in their joint statement that the state was wasting taxpayer dollars by pushing back against their efforts to recount votes in the various races.
Southworth has played a central role in the recount petitions, testifying in two petition hearings thus far.
Southworth was set to speak about her efforts Wednesday night on a show hosted by Mike Lindell, a pillow company owner who has grown a nationwide audience parroting the falsehood that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, alongside Stephen Knipper. Knipper (who came close to defeating former Democratic secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes in 2015, served on staff with former Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton and later lost to Adams in the 2019 primary) has frequently joined Southworth on a “restore election integrity” tour across the state.
The pair did not appear on the show, with Lindell instead focusing on the company’s strained relationship with retail giant Walmart and Georgia election fraud conspiracies.
Southworth and Knipper incorporate several unproven conspiracy theories about elections at the national and state level in their presentation.
Ehly told The Lexington Herald-Leader that it “looks extremely hopeful” that she will be able to pay her $21,700 bond and that Southworth would “make an appeal for donations” on Lindell’s program.
Ehly and Gilbert have until Thursday to post their full bond amounts.
Lindstrom said that the Secretary of State’s Office believes candidates can use dollars raised in their campaigns for office to fund recount petitions but that they haven’t seen it done before.
