# Recount Trigger Crosswalk [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] produces a number. [[Post-Election Audit Crosswalk]] checks that number against the paper and, in most states, finds that it has no mechanism to move it. [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]] makes the number final. This map is the other instrument in that gap — the **recount**, the only procedure in American election administration that re-tallies the ballots with the express purpose of replacing the reported result. The queue item that commissioned this map predicted a clean inversion of the audit finding: that an automatic recount is a **statutory** check firing with nobody deciding anything, a requested recount is a **resource** check the better-funded campaign wins by default, and the states split roughly evenly between the two. The first two halves of that are right. The third is wrong, and the reason it is wrong is the finding: **the automatic/requested binary is not a binary.** A third tier sits between them in which the loser must ask but the state must grant and the public pays — Minnesota writes both tiers in consecutive subdivisions of one statute — and that middle tier is large enough that it is where every published disagreement about this subject comes from. Counts of "states with automatic recounts" run **20, 26 and 28** across three current trackers, an eight-state spread, because each one draws the line between tier 1 and tier 2 in a different place. The second finding is smaller and worse. **The thresholds on this map are not comparable to each other**, because "one-half of one percent" is measured against five different quantities depending on the state: all votes cast · the top two candidates' combined total · the winner's own total · the losing candidate's own total · or no percentage at all, just a raw number of votes. Colorado's 0.5% is a share of the **winner's** total (C.R.S. 1-10.5-101(1)(b)); Texas's 10% is a share of the **loser's** total (Tex. Elec. Code § 212.022). Every fifty-state recount table in circulation, including the three this map reconciles, prints these in one column as though they were the same unit. They are not, and the difference is large enough to change which races qualify. A third finding is a correction rather than a structure. Where the trackers conflict, **the statute wins, and the statute disagrees with the trackers more often than it should.** Hawaii's trigger is "one hundred votes or one-quarter of one per cent ... whichever is greater" (HRS § 11-158, L 2019 c 135); of the three trackers, one has the percentage wrong, one has the comparator inverted, and one has both. Michigan's trigger is 0.1% of total votes cast (Mich. Comp. Laws § 168.880a(1)), not the 2,000-vote figure two fifty-state surveys still print — which resolves the open question flagged on [[Recount]]. > [!note] How to read this crosswalk > `■` marks a part · `▸` marks a tier, column or lane · `⚡` marks what switches the recount on · `◇` marks who has to act for it to happen · ` marks who pays · `↩` marks what earns a refund · `⚖` marks whether the result replaces the certified one · `⊘` marks a duty or remedy that does not exist · `✱` marks the structural point of a block · `⚑` marks something that **changed for November 2026** · `◈` marks **a count that is a definitional artifact rather than a fact**, explained in the Notes · `†` marks **a figure taken from the statute against a tracker that disagrees** · `[bracketed]` notes are dated caveats. Everything inside the fence is a **statute, a tier or a state** — **no current officeholder is named anywhere on this map**, by design, so it stays true as seats turn over on 3 November 2026. ``` RECOUNT TRIGGER CROSSWALK — the three tiers, and why "0.5%" is five different numbers (as of 5 October 2026) │ Legend: ▸ tier / column ⚡ trigger ◇ who must act $ who pays │ ↩ what earns a refund ⚖ does it replace the certified result │ ⊘ does not exist ⚑ changed for November 2026 │ ◈ count is a definitional artifact † statute over tracker │ │ THE ONE-LINE VERSION: THERE ARE THREE TIERS, NOT TWO. The middle one — the loser │ must ask, the state must grant, the public pays — is where every published │ disagreement about this subject lives. See Part A, then Part B before trusting │ ANY threshold on this or any other fifty-state recount table. │ ■ PART A — THE THREE TIERS (who has to act, and who pays for it) │ ├─▸ TIER 1. AUTOMATIC / MANDATORY ............... 26 states + DC ◈ see Note 1 │ ⚡ the certified margin falls inside a statutory threshold │ ◇ NOBODY. No candidate files, no official exercises discretion, no court │ orders it. The canvassing authority's duty attaches on the arithmetic. │ $ the state or the county, always │ ✱ THIS IS THE ONLY TIER THAT PROTECTS A LOSER WHO HAS RUN OUT OF MONEY, │ RUN OUT OF LAWYERS, OR CONCEDED. It is also the only tier that cannot be │ waived — which is why the 2024 Pennsylvania Senate recount had to be │ affirmatively stopped after the trailing candidate conceded, rather than │ simply never starting. │ ⚑ GEORGIA ADDED A SECOND TIER-1 TRIGGER FOR THIS ELECTION. SB 3EX (2026 │ special session) requires a FULL STATEWIDE HAND RECOUNT at a 0.5% margin │ for eight statewide offices — Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, │ Attorney General, School Superintendent, and the Commissioners of │ Insurance, Agriculture and Labor — but ONLY where one of them appears │ FIRST OR SECOND on the ballot. The hand count becomes the official result; │ counties finishing within 17 days of the order are reimbursed. │ ✱ A BALLOT-POSITION CONDITION ON A RECOUNT TRIGGER EXISTS NOWHERE ELSE │ IN AMERICAN ELECTION LAW. It is a workload cap written as a rule about │ typography, and it means two races at identical margins get different │ procedures depending on where they were printed. │ ├─▸ TIER 2. MANDATORY ON REQUEST, PUBLICLY FUNDED ... the missing category │ ⚡ the margin falls inside a threshold AND the trailing candidate files │ ◇ THE LOSER — but the authority has NO DISCRETION TO REFUSE │ $ the state or the county. No bond, no deposit, nothing at risk. │ → the worked statutes: │ MINNESOTA ...... ≤0.25% federal and statewide · ≤0.5% legislative · or a │ 10-vote margin where 400 or fewer votes were cast; the │ request is due within TWO BUSINESS DAYS of the canvass │ [Minn. Stat. § 204C.35 subd. 1 — "shall" on request] │ MONTANA ........ ≤0.25% state-funded on request; >0.25% but ≤0.5% on the │ candidate's own money — ONE STATUTE, TWO TIERS, and the │ ONLY variable between them is the margin │ WISCONSIN ...... free to the requester at ≤0.25% │ CALIFORNIA ..... state pays below 1,000 votes or 0.5% │ IOWA ........... state pays below 0.5% │ ✱ THIS TIER IS WHY THE PUBLISHED COUNTS DISAGREE BY EIGHT STATES. A tracker │ that asks "does a close margin get you a recount you do not pay for?" │ counts Minnesota as automatic. A tracker that asks "does the recount │ happen if nobody files?" does not. BOTH ANSWERS ARE CORRECT TO THEIR OWN │ QUESTION, and neither tracker states which question it asked. │ ✱ THE PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE FROM TIER 1 IS ONE THING ONLY: a two-day filing │ deadline. A tier-2 right is extinguished by a trailing candidate who │ concedes early, travels, or simply does not know the rule. Tier 1 is not. │ └─▸ TIER 3. DISCRETIONARY, AT THE REQUESTER'S EXPENSE ... the default everywhere ⚡ nothing. The margin is outside every threshold. ◇ THE LOSER, and the gate is money rather than arithmetic $ the requester, up front, by deposit or bond → TEXAS ......... $60 per precinct on paper ballots, $100 per precinct on electronic systems [Tex. Elec. Code § 212.112] → PENNSYLVANIA .. $50 cash or a $100 bond PER ELECTION DISTRICT, and the petition must come from three qualified electors of that district — a CANDIDATE HAS NO STANDING TO ASK AT ALL [25 P.S. §§ 3261(b), 3263(a)(1)] → MINNESOTA ..... a bond for the full expense [§ 204C.35 subd. 2] → MICHIGAN ...... a per-precinct deposit scaled to the margin itself, so the further behind the petitioner is, the more it costs [Mich. Comp. Laws §§ 168.867, 168.881] ✱ THE QUEUE ITEM'S PREDICTION IS CORRECT ABOUT THIS TIER AND ONLY THIS TIER: a tier-3 recount is a resource check, and the better-funded campaign wins it by default. Trump's 2020 Wisconsin county recounts cost $3 million and moved 87 votes the other way. What the prediction missed is that tier 3 is not the other half of a two-part system — it is the residue left after two other tiers have already handled every margin close enough to matter. │ ├─▸ AND A FOURTH GATE THAT IS NEITHER MARGIN NOR MONEY: THE MERITS │ MICHIGAN requires a petitioning candidate to state "a good-faith belief │ that, but for error in the canvass or returns of the votes, the candidate │ would have had a reasonable chance of winning" [MCL § 168.862] │ PENNSYLVANIA requires an allegation of specific fraud or error WITH │ SUPPORTING EVIDENCE only for a limited recount; a full-district recount │ needs none [25 P.S. § 3263(a)(1)] │ ✱ A MERITS GATE IS A DIFFERENT ANIMAL FROM A MARGIN GATE. A margin is │ arithmetic anyone can check. "A reasonable chance of winning" is a │ judgment, made by the body whose own count is being questioned. │ ├─▸ TIER 0. NO ADMINISTRATIVE RECOUNT AT ALL ...... ILLINOIS · MISSISSIPPI · │ TENNESSEE ◈ contested — see Note 4 │ ⊘ there is no recount to trigger, request or pay for │ → the only route to a second count is an ELECTION CONTEST — a lawsuit, on a │ court's calendar, under a standard of proof set by state law │ ✱ THESE THREE STATES ARE THE AUDIT FINDING'S MIRROR IMAGE. The audit map │ found states where a check runs and cannot change the number. Here no │ check runs at all, and the number can only be changed by litigation. │ ■ PART B — THE DENOMINATOR PROBLEM (why no column on any such table is comparable) │ │ Every fifty-state recount table prints a percentage column. The percentages are │ not percentages of the same thing. FIVE DIFFERENT DENOMINATORS ARE IN USE: │ ├─▸ 1. ALL VOTES CAST IN THE CONTEST .............. the modal form │ ALABAMA "no more than .5% of the votes cast" · HAWAII "of the total number │ of votes cast for the contest" · MICHIGAN "of the total number of votes cast │ in a statewide election" · PENNSYLVANIA "of votes cast" │ ├─▸ 2. THE TOP TWO CANDIDATES' COMBINED TOTAL │ ARIZONA "the difference in total votes cast for the top two candidates" · │ OREGON "no more than .2% of total votes for both candidates" │ ✱ in a three-way race this is a SMALLER denominator than form 1, so the same │ stated percentage is a TIGHTER threshold — fewer races qualify. │ ├─▸ 3. THE WINNING CANDIDATE'S OWN TOTAL │ COLORADO "less than or equal to one-half of one percent OF THE HIGHEST VOTE │ CAST in that election contest" [C.R.S. 1-10.5-101(1)(b)] │ ✱ in a two-way race this is roughly HALF the denominator of form 1, so │ Colorado's "0.5%" is approximately a 0.25% threshold in form-1 terms. │ It is printed in the same column as Alabama's. │ ├─▸ 4. THE LOSING CANDIDATE'S OWN TOTAL │ TEXAS "less than 10 percent of THAT CANDIDATE'S number of votes" — the │ petitioner's own total [Tex. Elec. Code § 212.022] │ ✱ THIS IS NOT A MARGIN THRESHOLD AT ALL. It is a ratio between two │ candidates, and it is enormously wider than it looks: a candidate who │ loses 55–45 is inside it. Texas's eligibility rule is the loosest in the │ country and its automatic trigger is the narrowest possible — a tie. │ └─▸ 5. NO PERCENTAGE. A RAW NUMBER OF VOTES. MICHIGAN ...... state senate ≤75 votes · state representative ≤25 votes CONNECTICUT ... fewer than 20 votes · NEW YORK ... 20 votes or fewer DELAWARE ...... fewer than 1,000 votes or 0.5%, WHICHEVER IS LESS HAWAII ........ 100 votes or 0.25%, WHICHEVER IS GREATER † WASHINGTON .... fewer than 2,000 votes AND less than 0.5% — a CONJUNCTION, so a large close race can fail the vote test and not recount NEW YORK ...... or fewer than 5,000 votes where 1,000,000+ ballots were cast ✱ "WHICHEVER IS LESS", "WHICHEVER IS GREATER" AND "AND" ARE THREE DIFFERENT LOGICAL OPERATORS JOINING THE SAME TWO TESTS, and they point in opposite directions. Delaware's pair narrows the trigger as the electorate grows; Hawaii's widens it; Washington's requires both and is therefore the narrowest of the three. No table in circulation marks the operator. │ ■ PART C — WHO MAY ASK (standing, which is not the same question as the margin) │ ├─▸ A DEFEATED CANDIDATE ........................ the near-universal rule │ ├─▸ NO CANDIDATE MAY ASK — AUTOMATIC TRIGGER ONLY ... 7 states │ ARIZONA · CONNECTICUT · FLORIDA · HAWAII · NEW YORK · PENNSYLVANIA · │ SOUTH CAROLINA │ ✱ IN THESE SEVEN STATES A LOSER OUTSIDE THE THRESHOLD HAS NO RECOUNT AT ANY │ PRICE. The margin is not a cost gate, it is the whole of the law, and the │ only remaining route is a contest in court. │ ◈ one tracker prints this list as NINE by folding in Illinois, Mississippi │ and Tennessee — which have no recount at all, a different category — and │ DROPPING Pennsylvania, where candidates genuinely cannot ask. See Note 3. │ ├─▸ VOTERS OR ELECTORS, BY PETITION │ PENNSYLVANIA ... three qualified electors per election district — the ONLY │ route in the state, and it is organised by district rather │ than by race, so a statewide recount is assembled district │ by district [25 P.S. § 3261] │ MASSACHUSETTS .. 1,000 or more voters │ TEXAS .......... 25 or more voters jointly, ballot measures only │ also: ALABAMA · ALASKA · CALIFORNIA · NEVADA · NEW JERSEY · SOUTH DAKOTA │ ✱ A PETITION THRESHOLD IS AN ORGANISING TEST, NOT A LEGAL ONE. Three │ electors is a phone call; 1,000 voters is a campaign. The same nominal │ right is available to an individual in one state and only to an │ organisation in another. │ ├─▸ A POLITICAL PARTY ... COLORADO · INDIANA · MICHIGAN · OREGON · SOUTH DAKOTA · │ WASHINGTON │ └─▸ AN ELECTION OFFICIAL ... CALIFORNIA · GEORGIA · OREGON · WYOMING ✱ worth naming because it is the one route that does not require a loser at all — the administrator can order a recount of a race nobody contested. │ ■ PART D — WHO PAYS, AND WHAT EARNS THE MONEY BACK │ │ The deposit is the famous part. The REFUND CONDITION is the part that decides │ whether the deposit is a fee or a wager, and it varies in KIND, not just degree: │ ├─▸ REFUNDED IF THE OUTCOME CHANGES ............... the standard rule │ TEXAS [§§ 215.003–004] · MICHIGAN [§§ 168.867(9), 168.881(17)] · and most │ tier-3 states │ ✱ A WAGER ON A ONE-IN-TWO-THOUSAND EVENT. Of 6,929 statewide general │ elections from 2000 to 2023, 36 went to a recount and THREE reversed. │ ├─▸ REFUNDED IF THE OUTCOME CHANGES *OR* IF AN AUTOMATIC RECOUNT WOULD HAVE BEEN │ WARRANTED ANYWAY ... COLORADO [C.R.S. 1-10.5-106] │ ✱ the only design on the map that refunds for being RIGHT ABOUT THE MARGIN │ rather than right about the winner. │ ├─▸ REFUNDED IF FRAUD OR SUBSTANTIAL ERROR IS DISCOVERED ... PENNSYLVANIA │ [25 P.S. § 3261(d)] │ ✱ A DIFFERENT BET ENTIRELY. Petitioners can be completely vindicated on the │ facts — real error found, result unchanged — and still get their money │ back, which no outcome-based rule allows. │ ├─▸ REFUNDED IF THE DISCREPANCY EXCEEDS A STATED SIZE ... MINNESOTA, where the │ jurisdiction pays if the recount changes the winner OR shows a discrepancy │ "greater than two votes and greater than one-quarter of one percent" │ [§ 204C.35 subd. 2] │ ✱ the only refund rule keyed to the ACCURACY OF THE ORIGINAL COUNT rather │ than to the identity of the winner. It is an audit test wearing a recount's │ clothes — and it is the one provision on this map that pays a candidate for │ finding an error that did not help them. │ └─▸ ⊘ NO REFUND AVAILABLE AT ALL ... reported for KENTUCKY · NORTH DAKOTA · RHODE ISLAND · SOUTH DAKOTA ◈ this list is tracker-sourced and the trackers disagree with each other; it is NOT verified against the statutes here and should be checked before citation. See Note 5. │ ■ PART E — METHOD, AND WHETHER THE SECOND NUMBER IS THE OFFICIAL ONE │ ├─▸ WHO CHOOSES HAND OR MACHINE │ TEXAS .......... THE PETITIONER CHOOSES; absent a request, ballots are │ recounted electronically "using the same program as the │ original count" [Tex. Elec. Code § 214.042(c)] │ ✱ A MACHINE RECOUNT ON THE SAME PROGRAM CANNOT DETECT A │ PROGRAMMING ERROR. It re-runs the arithmetic, not the │ reading of the ballot. It is a check on tabulation and │ nothing else — the default in most states. │ FLORIDA ........ machine first; if the margin is then under 0.25%, a SECOND │ recount BY HAND of overvotes and undervotes only │ DELAWARE ....... machine first; hand recount if still under 0.25% │ WASHINGTON ..... separate thresholds for a machine recount and a MANUAL one │ GEORGIA ........ ⚑ full hand recount, no machine stage, for the eight │ offices in Part A [SB 3EX, 2026] │ └─▸ ⚖ DOES THE RECOUNT REPLACE THE CERTIFIED RESULT? YES — AND THIS IS THE WHOLE DIFFERENCE FROM AN AUDIT. A recount produces the official tally; Georgia's 2026 statute says so in terms, that the hand-counted results "become the new official results." The post-election audit crosswalk found that in most states an audit has NO mechanism to amend a certificate. The recount needs no such mechanism because it IS the count, not a check on one. ✱ THE TWO INSTRUMENTS ARE THEREFORE NOT REDUNDANT AND NOT SUBSTITUTES. An audit samples to detect error and mostly cannot fix it; a recount re-tallies to replace the number and mostly is not triggered. A state can have both and still have no working remedy, because the audit that could detect the problem does not bind and the recount that would bind does not fire. │ ■ PART F — WHAT NO RECOUNT ON THIS MAP REACHES │ ├─ ELIGIBILITY, AGAIN. A recount re-counts the ballots that were accepted. It │ does not revisit acceptance. The sharpest case of the cycle is INDIANA SENATE │ DISTRICT 23, 2026: the state Recount Commission discarded ballots lacking a │ clerk's signature and flipped a three-vote race; the Indiana Supreme Court │ restored them on 10 September 2026 and flipped it back, 6,335–6,332. The │ recount turned entirely on WHICH BALLOTS COUNT, which is not a counting │ question, and a court had to answer it. │ ├─ ⊘ FEDERAL LAW. THERE IS NO FEDERAL RECOUNT REQUIREMENT, exactly as there is │ no federal audit requirement. The Help America Vote Act regulates the voting │ SYSTEM and commands no second count of any result. The one federal clock that │ constrains recounts — the deadline for a state to resolve a presidential │ contest before the electors meet — DOES NOT APPLY TO A MIDTERM. On │ 3 November 2026 the binding deadlines are state deadlines and the seating │ dates of the chambers, and nothing federal shortens them. │ ├─ THE MARGIN THAT NEVER GETS COUNTED. Every tier on this map is keyed to a │ margin, which means the entire system is designed around the possibility that │ a CLOSE count is wrong and is silent on the possibility that a LOPSIDED one │ is. No state recounts a race because the result was surprising. │ ├─ THE DOWN-BALLOT MAJORITY. The percentage triggers are written for statewide │ contests; Michigan's are the rare office-specific ones. A county commission │ race decided by four votes is inside almost no state's automatic trigger as a │ percentage of a small electorate, and its loser is the least likely of anyone │ on the ballot to be able to fund a tier-3 recount. │ └─ THE CERTIFIED RESULT THAT IS WRONG FOR A REASON A COUNT CANNOT FIND. Where the objection is eligibility, procedure, or fraud rather than arithmetic, the recount is the wrong instrument and the election contest is the only one left. That is the next map in this lane, and the three court-only states in Part A are where it is the FIRST instrument as well as the last. ``` ## Notes 1. **"Twenty-six states have automatic recounts" is a definitional artifact, and the spread is eight states wide.** [[National Conference of State Legislatures]], updated **9 September 2026**, names 26 states plus DC. [[Ballotpedia]] says **28** as of September 2025. MultiState says **20** margin-triggered plus "several others" on ties. These are not three measurements of one quantity. NCSL's and the [[National Association of Secretaries of State]] October 2024 survey's lists agree closely with each other and both exclude Minnesota, Virginia, Maryland, Nevada, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas; Ballotpedia's automatic column includes most of them. The reconciliation is Part A tier 2: those are states where a close margin produces a **publicly funded recount on request**, and Ballotpedia is counting the funding while NCSL and NASS are counting the duty. Both are describing real law. Neither states which question it answered, and a reader who takes either number at face value has a wrong picture of how many American losers get a free second count. 2. **Minnesota is the worked proof of tier 2, and it is unusually clean because one statute contains both tiers.** Minn. Stat. § 204C.35 subd. 1 makes a recount **mandatory upon written request** at ≤0.25% for federal and statewide offices and ≤0.5% for legislative ones, with the request due within two business days of the canvass; subd. 2 lets a candidate outside those margins recount at their own expense on a bond. The same section therefore writes a free-on-request recount and a pay-to-play recount and distinguishes them by **nothing but the margin**. Montana does the same thing in one provision with the two tiers at ≤0.25% and >0.25%–0.5%. Any crosswalk with one "automatic?" column has to put these states in a box that does not exist. 3. **The "no requested recount" list is seven states, not nine, and one tracker gets both ends of it wrong.** MultiState names Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania and South Carolina — states with an automatic trigger and no candidate-initiated route. NCSL names nine by adding Illinois, Mississippi and Tennessee, which have **no administrative recount at all** and therefore belong in tier 0, and by omitting **Pennsylvania**, where 25 P.S. § 3157 lets a candidate appeal a county board's computation to a court that may order a recount but gives the candidate no right to request one directly — the only petition route is three qualified electors per district under § 3261. Folding tier 0 into the no-request list conflates "you may not ask" with "there is nothing to ask for," which are the two opposite ends of this map. 4. **Illinois is the contested member of tier 0.** NCSL and MultiState both name three court-only states: Illinois, Mississippi and Tennessee. Ballotpedia says 48 states had a recount provision as of September 2025, which leaves two, and separately lists Illinois in its automatic column at 0.5%. Illinois has a **discovery recount** — a limited retabulation of up to 25% of precincts available to a losing candidate — which produces evidence for an election contest rather than a revised result. Whether that counts as "a recount" is exactly the kind of question that makes these counts disagree, and it is recorded here rather than resolved. 5. **The no-refund list in Part D is tracker-sourced and should not be cited without checking the statutes.** Ballotpedia's cost tables are internally inconsistent in the extract available — its "state pays," "depends on circumstances" and "no refund" groups overlap, and several states appear in all three. The four states named in Part D are the ones that appear in its no-refund group and nowhere in its refund group, which is the most defensible reading of a defective table and is still not a verified statutory finding. Kentucky, North Dakota, Rhode Island and South Dakota each need their own statute read before this line is repeated. Flagged rather than dropped because the **existence** of a no-refund design is the structurally interesting fact and is well attested; only the membership is uncertain. 6. **Hawaii's statute contradicts all three trackers, and this is the general warning.** HRS § 11-158, as amended by **L 2019, c 135**, reads: a recount is required where the difference "is equal to or less than one hundred votes or one-quarter of one per cent of the total number of votes cast for the contest, **whichever is greater**." NCSL prints 0.5% with "whichever is greater." [[Verified Voting]] prints 0.5% with "whichever is **less**" — which inverts the rule, because in any contest over 40,000 votes the two comparators select opposite clauses. NASS has the percentage right. One statute, three secondary renderings, two of them wrong in ways that change which races recount. Separately, a **March 2024** Hawaii bill was signed and reported as establishing mandatory recounts, while the current statute's amendment history shows only the 2019 act; what the 2024 measure actually amended is **[unconfirmed]**. 7. **Michigan's trigger is a percentage, which resolves an open question on [[Recount]].** That page records that "Michigan's trigger is given as a percentage by one source and a fixed vote count by another." The statute settles it: Mich. Comp. Laws § 168.880a(1) triggers an automatic recount where the "vote differential is 0.1% or less of the total number of votes cast in a statewide election." The 2,000-vote figure printed by NCSL and NASS appears to be a stale rendering. Michigan also carries the map's only office-specific raw-vote triggers — ≤75 votes for state senate, ≤25 for state representative — and, at 0.1%, the **tightest percentage trigger in the country**. 8. **Georgia now occupies two tiers at the same number, by different instruments.** Georgia has long given a candidate the right to request a recount at a margin of 0.5% or closer for any office — a request right, not an automatic trigger. SB 3EX, passed in the **2026 special session** and signed in **June 2026**, adds a genuinely automatic duty: at 0.5% the Secretary of State **must order a full statewide hand recount** for eight named offices, but only where one of them appears first or second on the ballot, with the hand count becoming official and counties reimbursed if they finish within 17 days. So the same 0.5% in Georgia means "you may ask" for most offices and "it happens whether anyone asks or not, by hand" for eight of them in a particular ballot position. NCSL's single Georgia row of "≤0.5%" is true of both and describes neither. The same bill's audit provisions are on [[Post-Election Audit Crosswalk]] and its QR-code postponement on [[Ballot Marking Device]]. 9. **What recounts actually change, which is the number that should govern everyone's expectations.** FairVote examined 6,929 statewide general elections from 2000 to 2023: 36 went to a recount, 23 of them automatic and 13 requested, and **three** reversed — Washington governor 2004, Vermont auditor 2006, Minnesota Senate 2008. One reversal per 2,310 elections. The average margin shift was **551 votes, or 0.03%**, and every reversal started from an original margin of 0.06% or less. The 2026 cycle has behaved exactly to form: Florida's 11th District primary recount moved **one vote to each candidate** on a 393-vote margin. This is the empirical case for tier 1 and against tier 3: at 0.03% of average movement, a threshold set at 0.5% is already an order of magnitude wider than the effect it is detecting, and money spent recounting a race outside it buys nothing. It is also the standing answer to "find the votes" politics. 10. **No officeholder is named on this map, by design.** The content is statutes, tiers, denominators and deposits. Georgia's hand-recount duty is written as "the Secretary of State" because that seat is on the ballot on 3 November 2026 and is one of the eight offices the duty covers — an official who may be ordering a recount of their own race, which is a structural fact about the statute rather than a fact about a person. The names belong to [[Battleground Election Officials Hub]] and [[2026 Midterms Hub]], where they can be dated and sourced individually, and to [[Brad Raffensperger]] for the current Georgia office. 11. **What this map deliberately excludes.** The **election contest** — who may file, the forum, the standard of proof, the remedy — is the next map in this lane and is not previewed here beyond Part F; the federal House analogue is [[Federal Contested Elections Act]], and Article I § 5 makes each chamber the judge of its own members' elections, so a contested House seat is resolved by a vote of the House rather than by any court. The sampling check that runs before or alongside a recount is [[Post-Election Audit Crosswalk]] and [[Risk-Limiting Audit]]. What counts as a mark on a ballot being recounted by hand is the approved next build. The custody of the paper is [[Election Ballot Chain of Custody Flow]]. The case law ceiling on all of it is [[Bush v. Gore]], which held that a recount conducted without a uniform standard raises an equal-protection problem — a holding this map's Part B makes newly relevant, since the standards are not uniform **across** states either. 12. **Questions left open.** The **populations** of tiers 1, 2 and 3 are not asserted anywhere on this map, because no source publishes a classification that distinguishes tier 2, and building one would require reading fifty statutes rather than three surveys — that is the single highest-value piece of work this map identifies and does not do. How many states measure their threshold against which denominator, beyond the eight verified in Part B. Whether any state has ever had a recount fail to fire because of Washington's conjunctive test or Delaware's "whichever is less." Whether Georgia's ballot-position condition has a legislative history explaining it, or whether it is purely a cost estimate. What the 2024 Hawaii act changed. Whether any tier-2 right has ever been lost to the two-business-day deadline, which would be the clearest demonstration that tier 2 is not tier 1. How many of the 36 FairVote recounts were tier 2 rather than tier 1 or 3, since the automatic/requested split they report inherits exactly the ambiguity Note 1 describes. And whether any state has ever recounted a race on an election official's own motion under the Part C route, which is the only route on the map that does not need a losing candidate at all. ## See also - [[How a Voter Is Removed From the Rolls]] — the stage upstream of every instrument on this page, and the one none of them reaches: a recount re-counts ballots that were accepted, and a removal's effect is a ballot never cast - [[State Ballot Position Crosswalk]] — where the covered office is printed, which Georgia's SB 3EX turned into a condition on the recount duty itself; also the fifty states on how order is set, and the measured primacy effect - [[Ballot Marking Validity Crosswalk]] — what counts as a mark on a ballot being recounted by hand; in a full hand recount there is no scanner and no referral, so these rules govern every ballot rather than the rejected pile - [[Post-Election Audit Crosswalk]] — the sampling check this instrument is not; built the day before this map, and the source of its central contrast - [[How a Conceded Election Is Finalized]] — the exit from the instrument on this page that this page does not map: the statutory RECOUNT WAIVER, by which a defeated candidate requests in writing that the recount not be made. It is not a concession and a concession does not accomplish it; Pennsylvania sets its deadline at noon on the second Wednesday after the election (25 P.S. § 3154(h)), Florida (§ 102.141(7)) and Nebraska (§ 32-1119(2)) set none, Arizona offers no waiver — and no fifty-state table of these deadlines appears to exist, the same gap in the published tables this map found for triggers - [[Recount]] — the term page this map is additive to; Part B and Note 7 resolve two of the conflicts it records as open - [[How a Tie Vote Is Broken]] — the map that answers the question this one ends at: in six of the states here an exact tie is the ONLY automatic trigger, so the recount is guaranteed to confirm the arithmetic that fired it, and something other than counting has to produce a winner - [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] — the first count, and the adjudication standard a hand recount has to apply - [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]] — the certificate a recount replaces rather than merely annotates - [[How Election Results Are Transmitted and Reported]] — where the margin that triggers all of this is first published - [[Election Ballot Chain of Custody Flow]] — the custody a recount presumes and cannot test - [[Election Canvass]] · [[Election Certification]] — the proceedings the filing deadlines are measured from - [[Bush v. Gore]] — the uniform-standard holding, and the reason Part B is a constitutional question and not only a drafting one - [[Federal Contested Elections Act]] — the federal House contest, resolved by a chamber vote rather than a court - [[Risk-Limiting Audit]] — the one audit design that can escalate to a full hand count without anybody's consent - [[How a Voting System Is Certified and Decertified]] — the equipment a same-program machine recount cannot check - [[Ballot Marking Device]] — the equipment Georgia's 2026 bill also addressed - [[Cast Vote Record]] · [[Ballot Reconciliation]] — the artifacts a recount is checked against - [[Provisional Ballot]] · [[Mail-in Voting]] — the acceptance decisions Part F says no recount reaches - [[Help America Vote Act]] — Title III, which requires no recount of anything - [[Election Assistance Commission]] — the federal standards body with no recount role - [[National Conference of State Legislatures]] · [[Ballotpedia]] · [[Verified Voting]] · [[National Association of Secretaries of State]] · [[Brennan Center for Justice]] — the trackers this map reconciles, and the subjects of Notes 1, 3, 5 and 6 - [[Election Denialism]] — the politics that Note 9's reversal rate is the standing answer to - [[State Election Administration Tree]] — the offices that run every procedure above - [[Elections Clause]] — why there are fifty answers and no federal one - [[Battleground Election Officials Hub]] — the named officials this map deliberately leaves out - [[2026 Midterms Hub]] — the cycle this map is built for - [[Foundations Hub]] — parent hub for the map series