$120,000 Kansas Abortion Referendum Recount Proves The Vote Is Riggeder Than You Thought!

Maybe all that money from 'Christians' could have been used to help people? Yes, we're silly like that.

You may be relieved to know that a hand recount of the votes in nine Kansas counties found that the state's overwhelming vote to preserve abortion rights was in fact overwhelming. State law allows anyone to demand a recount if they can prove they have sufficient funds to pay for it — so an election denier took to rightwing social media and raised enough money to fund one, even though there was no chance at all that the election's 59 percent to 41 percent outcome could have been changed. But then, these folks thought they were on a mission from God, and not in the fun way that includes lots of iconic blues and soul icons and an absurdly over the top car chase.

Ah, but at least the outcome of the recount, affirming that the August 2 referendum, which would have let the Kansas Legislature outlaw abortion lost in a landslide , will finally satisfy those crazy conspiracy theorists who insist elections are rigged, won't it? They demanded a recount, they paid for the recount, and on Sunday, the recount showed the initial results were right. That's certainly $120,000 well spent.

Haha, we are such sillies. We checked, and no pigs are flying around, Hell remains hot, and the election deniers are displeased with the recount . For starters, the organizer of the recount has taken to TikTok to insist — vaguely — that voter fraud was rampant, and has "narrowed in on a technical error in a Cherokee County commission race as evidence of statewide issues." Even more shockingly, Sedgwick County, home to Wichita, experienced a data glitch that slowed completion of its recount by a day. Clearly the entire election and the recount were both invalid, meaning that women across Kansas must now place their wombs in a trust managed by Operation Rescue.

In Sane World, the recount, as the Kansas City Star puts it, "delivered a second victory for opponents of an amendment that would have stripped abortion rights from the state constitution."

But there's a catch: Because facts don't matter to conspiracy people, the recount's support for the original results simply shows how deeply the fix is in. As election deniers said of recounts and audits following the 2020 election, there's nothing to be gained by recounting ballots that they just KNOW were fraudulent to begin with. They had to be fraudulent, because a fair election would have gone the way wingnuts wanted. That's just logic.

As UCLA law prof Rick Hasen, one of the country's top election law experts, told the Star, “In this age of voter fraud hysteria it appears that no amount of evidence is enough to convince some people.” But then, that's what you'd expect a corrupt liberal Marxist academic from California to say, isn't it?

The recount drive was spearheaded by one Melissa Leavitt, an election denier who "has testified to the Kansas Legislature about 2020 election conspiracy theories." Leavitt raised part of the money through the rightwing "Christian" crowdfunding site "GiveSendGo," which featured the effort in a YouTube video that we managed to watch for almost seven of its 21 minutes.

In the video, Leavitt talks about how Jesus made clear to her that saving Kansas from rigged elections was her purpose in life, so don't expect her to change her mind just because the recount reaffirmed the results. Jesus wouldn't mislead her, dummy! She claims in the video that "our audit process" had determined that machines in one county were "flipping votes" in the August 2 Republican primary, although she was remarkably short on details for something that she considered a message from God.

The Star explains that Leavitt's efforts raised about $50,000, but that the bulk of the funding for the recount came from Wichita anti-abortion activist Mark Gietzen. In addition to seeking to force women to birth babies they don't want, Mr. Gietzen is the leader of something called the "Kansas Republican Assembly," because the regular GOP isn't far enough to the right.

The two had originally wanted a statewide recount of all votes, but that would have cost around $230,000, according to the office of Secretary of State Scott Schwab. Between the crowdfunding and pawning Gietzen's collection of Phyllis Schlafly bobbleheads or whatever, they only came up with a bit less than $120,000, which was enough to pay for the nine-county recount. The Star notes that Gietzen paid "using a credit card for the Kansas Republican Assembly and money from his own retirement account."

Of course, now that the recount is finished, Gietzen wants to weasel out of paying for the recount in Sedgwick County because it was delayed, because there are no technical issues, only fraud:

Gietzen said he would file a lawsuit Monday calling for a full statewide hand recount.

“It was absolutely foolhardy for the secretary to not call an immediate stop and a recount, hand recount on everything,” Gietzen said, arguing the state must prove Cherokee County’s error wasn’t widespread.

After all, we live in a highly advanced world where all technology works seamlessly, so if your TiVo fails to record F-Boy Island, that's proof the Illuminati are out to get you.

Fortunately, Gietzen has a plan. He told the Star that he hadn't really expected a different outcome from the recount (presumably because the rot goes so deep), so he's planning to start harassing people randomly but sort of systematically:

“The next step is to check the registrations of the people who they say voted,” Gietzen said. “I don’t care whether they voted yes or no, it doesn’t make any difference to me. I want to know if a human being voted. So we’ll be visiting homes to see if anyone lives there – maybe 10 out of every precinct.”

Clearly, anyone who doesn't come to the door, or who tells him to GTFO with his shenanigans, will count as a fake voter, so he's likely to find just oodles of fraud.

[ Kansas City Star / Joe. My. God ]

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