INDIANAPOLIS — A week after 2020’s general election, the president and many of his supporters are still vowing to challenge the results. That includes the possibility of recounts in several states.
The 13News VERIFY Team has been getting lots of questions about recounts.
“Do states have to recount votes if a candidate asks for a recount?” asked one 13News viewer.
“Who pays for recounting the votes? Is this a state by state decision or is there a federal decision?” wrote another.
WHAT WE FOUND
A VERIFY analysis of recount procedures reveals each state has its own rules that determine when a recount happens, who can ask for one and who pays the bill.
In Indiana, there is no provision for an automatic recount – even when results are very close. However, any candidate can request a recount within 14 days of an election if they are willing to pay the cost. If the results of the election are reversed due to the recount, the cost of the recount is returned to the candidate who requested it.
It is highly unlikely that any candidate or political party will be requesting a recount in Indiana for the presidential race, which President Trump won by nearly 500,000 votes.
Most of the recount attention is focused on battleground states where the president’s vote tally shows he is losing by a narrow margin. With information gathered from the National Conference of State Legislatures and Ballotpedia (a nonprofit, nonpartisan resource on American elections), here is a look at the recount rules in some of those key battleground states:
Arizona
Arizona does have a state law that requires an automatic recount when the results of an election are extremely close. The state’s automatic recount provision is triggered for a presidential race when the vote margin is within one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) or within 200 votes. The most recent election results show the president trails Joe Biden in Arizona by five-tenths of one percent (0.5%) and nearly 15,000 votes, so the automatic recount rule does not apply. When the rule does apply, it is the state, county or municipality that covers the cost of the recount.
In Arizona, a candidate or political party cannot request a recount. If vote margins do not fall within the automatic recount parameter, only a court can order a recount to take place.
Michigan
Automatic recounts are triggered in Michigan when a statewide race is decided by 2,000 votes or less. The president currently trails by more than 145,000 votes in Michigan, which means an automatic recount will not take place. State law still allows candidates to request a recount, but they must be willing to pay the cost.
Following the 2016 presidential election, Michigan’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a new law that increased the cost of a recount to as much as $250 per precinct. Because the president is behind in the vote count by less than five percentage points — he now trails by 2.7% — his campaign would not be subject to the higher fees and would be required to pay a recount charge of $125 in each of Michigan’s precincts. Green Party candidate Jill Stein paid $973,250 for her requested recount in 2016. (Much of that was refunded when a federal court halted the recount before it had started in all precincts.)
Georgia
Georgia does not have a law that requires a recount to take place in the event of a close election. State law does allow a candidate to request a recount within two days of the election’s certification if the vote result is within five-tenths of one percent (0.5%). As of today, the president is behind in the Georgia vote count by two-tenths of one percent (0.2%), so he is eligible to request a recount.
He will not need to make that request. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has already indicated a statewide recount will take place because the election results are so close. The state and its taxpayers will pay the cost of the recount.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania also has an automatic recount rule that takes affect when the margin of victory for a candidate is five-tenths of one percent (.5%) or less. The president is currently losing in Pennsylvania by seven-tenths of one percent (.7%), so the automatic recount rule does not apply.
In Pennsylvania, an automatic recount can also be triggered if there is evidence of “substantial” fraud or errors. While the president and his legal team have alleged “irregularities” in Pennsylvania voting, they have not yet presented evidence that would seem to rise to the level of widespread or substantial fraud that could overcome Biden’s 46,000+ vote lead.
Even when the vote margin does not fall within the 0.5% difference needed for an automatic recount, Pennsylvania voters can request a recount.
According to Ballotpedia, “Three voters of an election district may request a recount in the county of their election district by submitting an affidavit alleging errors in the vote totals.” The request must be submitted to the court of common pleas within five days after the final vote is counted. The requestors are required to pay the cost of the recount.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin does not conduct automatic recounts. A recount must be requested – either by a candidate or a voter – and is granted only when the trailing candidate’s vote tally is within one percent (1%) of the candidate who is leading. The president currently trails in Wisconsin by six-tenths of one percent (0.6%) so he is eligible to request a recount. Wisconsin law is also very clear about who pays the cost.
“In Wisconsin, if you're within point-two-five percent (0.25%), the state will pay for the recount. If you're within one percentage point, which [Trump] is, then he can pay for his own recount,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul explained in a recent interview with MSNBC.
The New York Times estimates the cost of a Wisconsin recount would be about $3 million.
The president has asked his supporters for donations to pay for recounts, but be aware the fine print on his solicitations says half of each donation to the president's election defense fund will be used to pay down the president's campaign debt.
It's important to point out, recounts rarely change the result of an election. The nonpartisan group FairVote analyzed nearly 5,800 statewide elections over the past 20 years. During that time there were 31 recounts, and only three of those recounts actually reversed the result of an election.