Has the Kansas Governor's Race Been Called?
No. The Kansas governor's race has not been called. The Associated Press still lists it as Too Early to Call, five days after Election Day, with Democrat Cindy Holscher leading Republican Ty Masterson by 7,638 votes — 551,250 to 543,612 — with an estimated 98.9 percent of the vote counted. No winner has been declared, and the result has not been certified.
The plain reality behind the question is the gap between leading and winning. On the record, Kansas has a leader: Holscher has held the lead since election night, it grew to nearly 7,300 votes in the Secretary of State's Friday update, and the latest AP count puts it at 7,638 out of about 1.09 million cast. In reality, the state does not trust its own first count enough to end this race on it — Kansas law looked at a margin under 1 percent and ordered the ballots checked by hand before anyone is declared governor.
What the two candidates claim pulls in opposite directions. Holscher declared victory on Wednesday, is preparing a transition, and was congratulated as "Governor-elect" by the sitting governor, Laura Kelly, who promised a smooth and peaceful transfer of power. Masterson has not conceded. He says the first count does not seem to be going his way, but that the margin is narrow enough that Kansas law calls for another look — and he is letting that process finish.
"The first count does not seem to be going our way, but the margin is narrow enough that Kansas law calls for another look, and we'll let that process finish."
The common-sense principle is plain: a lead is not a result. A candidate ahead by 7,638 votes is probably the winner — but "probably" is not what a state certifies, and a race this close is exactly the case the check was written for. If the hand count simply confirms the machines, Holscher's win becomes unanswerable; if it is skipped or rushed, every doubt about the count lives on for four years.
The consequence is that Kansas is spending this weekend finishing its election by hand. Under the state's close-race audit law, K.S.A. 25-3009, any statewide race within 1 percent on election night gets an automatic audit, and Secretary of State Scott Schwab announced that six Kansas races qualify — governor, secretary of state, attorney general and three state House districts. County workers pull the paper ballots from 10 percent of precincts in every county, at least one precinct per county, count the race by hand and compare the totals with what the tabulators reported; if the numbers do not match and officials cannot explain why, the audit can widen. Counties worked from Thursday through this weekend so the audit is done before county commissions start certifying results on Monday, November 9 — commissions have six to thirteen days after the election to certify.
The details that decide what happens next are these. Friday was the last day for mail ballots to arrive — ballots postmarked by Election Day still counted if they reached the county by Friday, because a Douglas County judge's injunction in July kept the state's three-day grace period in place while a lawsuit over it goes on, and an appeals panel refused in October to pause that ruling. Provisional ballots are considered as counties canvass from Monday. Masterson then has until 5 p.m. on November 17 to request a full recount, and the money tells its own story about the margin: Kansas pays for a recount only when a race is within half a percent, and at roughly seven-tenths of a percent, Masterson would have to post a bond and carry the cost himself if the outcome does not change. Both candidates are state senators — Holscher of Overland Park, and Masterson of Andover, the Senate's president — and if Holscher is certified, it will be the first time in Kansas history that a Democrat succeeds a Democrat as governor. So the question that follows is not who is ahead — Kansas has known that since Tuesday — but whether the count checked by hand says the same thing as the count given by the machines. Masterson put the standard himself: "Every Kansan deserves to know the result is right."