After a week of escalating pressure, miscounted votes and public calls to step aside, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will formally recuse himself from the recount in the extremely tight primary between himself and Gov. John Colyer (R).
“We’ll be formally answering [Colyer’s] request tomorrow. But I’ll give you a heads-up. Yes, I’ll be happy to recuse myself,” he said to CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “But as I say, it really doesn’t make any difference. My office doesn’t count the votes. The counties do.”
Kobach has been maintaining that his role would largely divorce him from the counting proceedings and that recusal is unnecessary, but he is in charge of setting the price if Colyer asks for a recount, putting him in an ethically murky situation.
In addition, Colyer wrote a letter demanding that Kobach remove himself from the situation and accusing him of behaving in ways “inconsistent with Kansas law,” a call that got louder when a mistaken tabulation was discovered that cut Kobach’s lead over Colyer lead in half.
Watch below:
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) August 10, 2018
