‘A GARGANTUAN PROCESS’

Kansas’ $119K Abortion Amendment Recount Confirms Right to Choose

The margin was changed by less than 100 votes—of the more than 922,000 Kansans who voted earlier this month.

A recount requested by an election denier and an anti-abortion activist who will have to foot the nearly $120,000 bill to flip the result of the Kansas abortion amendment vote has ended, with a marginal change of less than 100 votes. The second victory, which comes after nine of Kansas’ 105 counties dutifully recounted their ballots, affirmed the “no” vote to preserve abortion rights for women. The Associated Press reported that the “no” votes lost 87 of their numbers, while “yes” gained six more votes. It was a fraction of a fraction of the 922,000 Kansans who turned out to vote on the amendment on Aug. 2. The man bankrolling the recount—Mark Gietzen, the founder of Kansas Coalition for Life—insisted he wouldn’t pay an estimated sum of $31,800 after a missed deadline in Sedgwick County caused no small amount of confusion. “That was totally screwed up,” Gietzen told The Wichita Eagle. “This is almost like doing an Ironman triathlon and having to add on another marathon at the end,” Fred Sherman, the Johnson County election commissioner, told the AP. “So it is quite a gargantuan process.”