Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s lead in the GOP primary for governor was cut in half Thursday after officials discovered a vote mistake, according to The Associated Press. Kobach was leading his opponent, Jeff Colyer, by a razor thin margin and the race was determined to be too close to call.
According to WIBW, Colyer will have 100 votes added from Thomas County. As WIBW noted, the Thomas County elections website shows Colyer received 522 votes in the primary while the Kansas Secretary of State’s website shows Colyer recieved 422 votes from Thomas County.
State elections director Bryan Caskey told WIBW the state website will be updated on Friday.
“The discovery of this error shows the importance of getting this right,” Kendall Marr, director of communications for Colyer, said in a statement. “This is why you have canvas, this is why you check your math, and this is exactly why Gov. Colyer will ensure that every vote is counted fairly and accurately. The vote margin now stands at 0.02%.”
Colyer, the incumbent, became governor after Sam Brownback was nominated for a position in the Trump administration.
Kobach had the backing of President Trump in the race and he led the administration’s disbanded voter fraud commission. The commission never presented any actual evidence of voter fraud despite repeated claims from Trump that there is serious voter fraud in the country and that so-called fraud cost him the popular vote against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat who sat on the disbanded commission, said he had concluded “that the panel had been set up to try to validate the president’s baseless claims about fraudulent votes in the 2016 election,” The Washington Post reported.
Kobach was also dealt a humiliating defeat in court in June. A federal judge ruled that the state’s election law requiring people to prove they were U.S. citizens before registering to vote was unconstitutional and ordered Kobach, who represented the secretary of state’s office in the case, to take a legal class on the rules of evidence and procedure, NPR reported.
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