Kansas’ elections director said last week that the state will conduct a hand recount of votes from its Aug. 2 election where voters upheld abortion protections.
The Associated Press reported that Melissa Leavitt of Colby, Kansas requested the recount. Bryan Caskey, the state elections director for the Kansas secretary of state’s office, said that the recount won’t begin without a guarantee that Leavitt will cover the cost.
Leavitt started a fundraising campaign on Give Send Go. She wrote on the site that she has “seen data in the week following our election in Kansas that there were irregularities the night of August 2.”
“I’ve been studying election integrity and fraud in our state since 2020,” she added. “It’s for this reason that I’m asking concerned citizens to step up and help a group of us who are fighting to get a recount of the Value Them Both Amendment.”
Townhall reported Aug. 3 how Kansas voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have ended abortion protections in the state. This came after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
If passed by the voters, language would have been added to the state Constitution stating, “[b]ecause Kansans value both women and children, the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion." As Leah noted in her report, the amendment failed 58.8 percent to 41.2 percent.
In the Dobbs case, the Supreme Court found that there was no Constitutional right to abortion established by Roe. Both Roe and 1992 abortion case Planned Parenthood v. Casey were overturned as a result. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion for the case.
The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.
In the opinion, Alito pointed to Plessy v. Ferguson, an 1896 decision that claimed that "separate but equal" did not violate the U.S. Constitution. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education overturned it.
Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided. Casey perpetuated its errors, calling both sides of the national controversy to resolve their debate, but in doing so, Casey necessarily declared a winning side. Those on the losing side—those who sought to advance the State’s interest in fetal life—could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views. The Court short-circuited the democratic process by closing it to the large number of Americans who disagreed with Roe.
The Kansas City Star reported Monday that a credit card belonging to the Kansas Republican Assembly was provided to advance the recount. Mark Gietzen, the group’s president and director of the Kansas Coalition for Life, told the Star that “we’re definitely going to have a recount.” He added that the recount has a “fifty-fifty” chance of changing the outcome of the Aug. 2 election.
“If there was zero chance of changing it, you know, then it would be really questionable whether this is a good use of time and money,” Gietzen said.