Senator Bernie Sanders has requested a re-canvass of votes cast in Kentucky’s Democratic presidential primary, narrowly won by Hillary Clinton. Capitol reporter Ryland Barton says recent re-canvasses haven’t changed the outcome of elections in Kentucky.
The re-canvass is essentially a re-tabulation of results from each precinct. It’ll be conducted on Thursday by the Secretary of State’s office.
University of Kentucky election law professor Joshua Douglas says re-canvasses are a vestige of the time before electronic voting machines, “When you have humans counting the votes, then certainly there’s a chance for greater changes in the vote-counting process. With electronic voting machines, a re-canvass is really just press the button and it’ll spit out the vote totals again. The likelihood of change at least in those counties is pretty small.”
There are still many counties that have paper ballots.
The last re-canvass conducted in the state was of the 2015 Republican gubernatorial primary, which James Comer requested after losing to then-candidate Matt Bevin by 83 votes.
The re-canvass did not change the outcome of the primary election.
