Two Republicans who baselessly suggested their losses in last month’s GOP primaries in Colorado may be due to fraud filed their second round of requests for recounts on Tuesday.
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and State Rep. Ron Hanks both echoed former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election during their own races for their party’s nomination for Colorado Secretary of State and U.S. Senate respectively.
After they each lost by more than 40,000 votes, they requested a hand recount.
The Colorado Secretary of State’s office said their regulations required any recounts to be done by machine and that it’d cost $236,000. When the two candidates didn’t pay, it proceeded with certification of their losses.
On Tuesday, the Secretary of State’s office released letters from Peters and Hanks insisting it wrongly rejected their hand recount requests, citing security flaws in voting machines used in Colorado. That has been a central part of the conspiracy theories the two candidates have promulgated.
The Secretary of State’s office had said those machines weren’t used in the primary, but the two candidates disagreed.
Three unsuccessful Republican statehouse candidates on Tuesday also requested hand recounts in their primary races.
Those three candidates all ran in El Paso County-based Senate and House districts:
- Lynda Zamora Wilson requested a recount in her Senate District 12 primary loss
- Summer Groubert requested a recount in her House District 18 primary loss
- Karl Dent requested a recount in his House District 21 primary loss
Wilson, Groubert and Dent are also seeking hand recounts even though hand recounts are prohibited.
Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report. Colorado Sun staff writer Jesse Paul contributed to this report.