Tuesday night, Bevin lost to Democrat Andy Beshear in a hotly contested race, which was enough to cause him to declare he wouldn’t concede the race, then called for a recanvassing of voters.
“Kentucky sadly—and it’s not unique to Kentucky—but there’s more than a little bit of history of vote fraud in our state,” Bevin told reporters, adding that his campaign was working on “getting affidavits and other information that will help us to get a better understanding of what did or did not happen.”
He added that there were reports of Kentucky voters being “incorrectly turned away from various voting booths around the state.”
Bevin also accused Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Secretary of State, of committing fraud by announcing the election results live on CNN, mentioning that she is currently the subject of a special state prosecutor’s investigation for allegedly misusing voter records.
“The fact that our secretary of state was on national TV … it was an interesting choice of places for her to go while the roll was being tallied, the votes were being tallied and to call an election,” he said.
“For her to try to jump the gun on this and interject herself into this, it’s something that’s being looked into,” he continued.
“This is from a woman, with all due respect to her, is not exactly rock solid as it comes to following the letter of the law,” he said.
“She’s currently under investigation for misuse of voter files herself. Her father has already been convicted of multiple—I think 10—different federal charges related to election fraud specific to her race,” he added.
Grimes is at the center of two legal cases, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. In one case, Jared Dearing, executive director of the State Board of Elections, has alleged that Grimes’ office illegally obtained the state’s voter registration database and did illegal searches of it.
In the other, Grimes filed a suit alleging that a new law stripped her office of its power over the State Board of Elections. She claims the law made it a misdemeanor for her office to search the database.
Her father, Jerry Lundergan, served as a Democrat in the Kentucky House of Representatives and the chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Party. In 1989, he was convicted of a felony charge of improperly using his influence, however, that conviction was later thrown out by an appeals court. Last year, he was indicted for making illegal campaign contributions to his daughter during her 2014 race to unseat Sen. Mitch McConnell.
The recanvassing work will be done by November 14, said a board of elections member. The Kentucky State Board of Elections will meet on November 21 to certify the election results.
Bevin’s opponent, Andy Beshear, has 49.2 percent (711,955 votes) to 48.9 percent for Bevin. A Libertarian candidate, John Hicks, received 28,475 votes, or 2.0 percent of the vote. Beshear’s margin of victory ultimately totaled 5,200 votes.
At a news conference held on Wednesday, Beshear said that he hadn’t spoken to Bevin about the recount but that he felt it was “time to move on” from the election, according to CBS News.
