# State Election Contest Crosswalk [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] produces a number. [[Ballot Marking Validity Crosswalk]] governs what the number is made of. [[Post-Election Audit Crosswalk]] checks the number against the paper and, in most states, finds it has no mechanism to move it. [[Recount Trigger Crosswalk]] re-tallies with the express purpose of replacing it. [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]] makes it final. This map is the instrument at the end of that sequence — the **election contest**, the adversarial proceeding by which a *certified* result is challenged and, in principle, undone. It is the least-mapped instrument in American election law, and the queue item that commissioned this map asked for the fifty states against six columns: who may file, the forum, the deadline from certification, the standard of proof, discovery, and the remedy. The queue item predicted that the variance would live in the **standard of proof**. That prediction is correct, and the standards are further apart than it assumed: Pennsylvania requires allegations that would "definitely change the results," Virginia requires only a "probable impact on the outcome," Florida accepts irregularity "sufficient to change **or place in doubt** the result," and Texas asks whether the reported outcome "is not the true outcome." Those are not four phrasings of one test. But the finding is in a column the queue item treated as descriptive. **The forum is a function of the office, not of the state.** A fifty-state forum column is a category error, in the same way the recount map's threshold column turned out to be: Virginia routes contests to **four different tribunals** depending on which office is contested, Texas to **five**, and Pennsylvania statutorily sorts every contestable office in the Commonwealth into **five numbered classes** before asking who hears it (25 P.S. § 3291). Worse for the table, two of these states draw the line in **opposite directions**. Texas gives its Senate exclusive jurisdiction over contests for state senator and its House over state representative, while sending the top statewide offices to a joint session (Tex. Elec. Code § 221.002). Pennsylvania's constitution sends contests for **members of the General Assembly to the courts of law** (Pa. Const. art. VII § 13) while 25 P.S. § 3312 sends the **Governor** to "a committee to be selected from both houses of the General Assembly." One state hands legislative seats to legislators and statewide offices to a joint session; the other hands legislative seats to judges and the governorship to legislators. The second finding is the sharpest single fact on the map. In Texas, the exclusive tribunal for a contest over the election of **presidential electors** is the **Governor** — not a court, not the legislature, but one executive officer, elected on the same ballot, exercising exclusive jurisdiction over the challenge to it (Tex. Elec. Code § 221.002). The third is a clock problem, and it is Virginia's. A contest over Virginia's presidential electors or a U.S. Senate seat must be noticed by **5:00 p.m. on the second calendar day after certification**, and § 24.2-805 states expressly that the contest "shall not wait upon the results of any recount." The recount petition in that same state is due **within 10 days from certification** (§ 24.2-801). The window to contest therefore closes **eight days before the window to request a recount closes** — so the instrument designed to find the error cannot inform the instrument designed to remedy it. The decision to contest must be made on the certified number alone. > [!note] How to read this crosswalk > `■` marks a part · `▸` marks a tier, class or lane · `◇` marks who may file · `⚖` marks the tribunal · `⏱` marks the deadline and what it runs from · `⊕` marks the standard the contestant must meet · `↪` marks the remedy · `⊘` marks a remedy or duty that **does not exist** · `✱` marks the structural point of a block · `⚑` marks something that **changed for November 2026** · `†` marks a figure or forum **taken from the statute itself** rather than from a survey · `?` marks a cell left **[unconfirmed]** rather than guessed · `[bracketed]` notes are dated caveats. Everything inside the fence is a **statute, a class, a forum 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. ``` STATE ELECTION CONTEST CROSSWALK — the forum is a function of the office, not the state (as of 7 October 2026) │ Legend: ▸ class / lane ◇ who may file ⚖ tribunal ⏱ deadline │ ⊕ standard of proof ↪ remedy ⊘ does not exist │ ⚑ changed for November 2026 † from the statute ? unconfirmed │ │ THE ONE-LINE VERSION: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "A STATE'S CONTEST FORUM." │ Virginia has four tribunals, Texas five, Pennsylvania five statutory classes — │ and Texas and Pennsylvania sort them in OPPOSITE directions. Read Part A before │ trusting any fifty-state contest table that prints one forum per state. │ ■ PART A — THE FORUM SPLITS BY OFFICE (three states, worked all the way down) │ ├─▸ TEXAS † Tex. Elec. Code § 221.002 — five tribunals, one statute │ ⚖ district court .................. EXCLUSIVE ORIGINAL JURISDICTION, default │ ⚖ Senate + House in JOINT SESSION .. governor · lieutenant governor · │ comptroller · land commissioner · AG │ ⚖ the SENATE alone ................. state senator (general or special) │ ⚖ the HOUSE alone .................. state representative │ ⚖ the GOVERNOR ..................... PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORS │ ✱ READ THAT LAST LINE AGAIN. The exclusive tribunal for a contest over the │ election of presidential electors is ONE EXECUTIVE OFFICER, elected on the │ same ballot being contested. No court has original jurisdiction over it. │ ⚖ court of appeals ................. appellate only, over district-court cases │ ├─▸ PENNSYLVANIA † 25 P.S. § 3291 — every office pre-sorted into five classes │ ▸ CLASS I ... governor · lieutenant governor │ ⚖ "a committee to be selected from both houses of the General Assembly" │ (25 P.S. § 3312) — a LEGISLATIVE tribunal │ ▸ CLASS II .. presidential electors · all statewide Commonwealth officers · │ nominations for U.S. Senator │ ▸ CLASS III . judges of the several courts │ ▸ CLASS IV .. state senators · state representatives · │ nominations for U.S. Representative │ ⚖ "shall be by the courts of law" (Pa. Const. art. VII § 13) — JUDICIAL │ ▸ CLASS V ... every county, city, borough, township, ward, school district │ and other local office │ ✱ THE INVERSION: Pennsylvania sends its own legislators' seats to JUDGES and │ the governorship to LEGISLATORS. Texas does exactly the reverse. Both are │ current law. Neither is the "normal" design, because there isn't one. │ └─▸ VIRGINIA † Va. Code § 24.2-803 to -806 — four tribunals, four deadlines ⚖ House Committee on Privileges and Elections ...... General Assembly seats (§ 24.2-803) ⚖ General Assembly, BOTH HOUSES in joint session ... governor · lieutenant governor · AG (§ -804) ⚖ special 3-judge court, Circuit Court of the City of Richmond — the chief judge plus two circuit judges from NON-CONTIGUOUS circuits appointed by the Chief Justice ................................. presidential electors · statewide primaries (§ 24.2-805) ⚖ special 3-judge circuit court where the candidate listed residency ................................................... U.S. House · state legislative · local (§ 24.2-806) ✱ The non-contiguous-circuit rule is the only venue provision found on this map that is explicitly designed to seat judges with no local stake. │ ■ PART B — WHO MAY FILE (standing, and it is wider than "the loser") │ ├─▸ THE LOSING CANDIDATE ONLY ......... Virginia, every class † § 24.2-803 to -806 │ ✱ The narrowest standing on the map. A Virginia contest dies with the │ candidate's decision not to bring it; no elector can revive it. ├─▸ CANDIDATE OR A VOTER .............. Nevada (candidate or registered voter) · │ Colorado ("qualified elector") ├─▸ CANDIDATE, VOTER, OR TAXPAYER ..... FLORIDA † Fla. Stat. § 102.168(1) │ ✱ The widest standing found. A taxpayer who did not vote in the race, and │ could not have, may contest its result. ├─▸ A GROUP OF VOTERS, BY COUNT ....... Pennsylvania — at least FIVE registered │ electors who voted in that election └─▸ VOTERS OR CANDIDATES, TO A BOARD .. North Carolina — the protest goes to the county or State Board of Elections FIRST, not to a court ✱ North Carolina is the one state here where the first tribunal is the election administrator itself, with Superior Court (Wake County) on appeal within 10 days. Everywhere else the contest starts outside the agency. │ ■ PART C — THE CLOCK (and the Virginia problem) │ ├─▸ MEASURED FROM CERTIFICATION │ ⏱ Virginia, electors / U.S. Senate .. 5:00 P.M. ON THE SECOND CALENDAR DAY │ † § 24.2-805 — the tightest on the map │ ⏱ Florida ........................... 10 days after midnight of the date of │ certification † § 102.168(2) │ ⏱ North Carolina .................... 5:00 p.m., 2nd business day after │ canvass (other irregularities) │ ⏱ Colorado .......................... 35 days for notice, then 35 more to │ file the complaint │ ⏱ Federal (U.S. House) .............. 30 days after the state authority has │ DECLARED the result → see Part F ├─▸ MEASURED FROM THE ELECTION (certification is irrelevant) │ ⏱ Pennsylvania ...................... 20 days after the election, whether or │ not a recount is running │ ⏱ Nevada ............................ 14 days after the election, or 5 days │ after a recount │ ⏱ Virginia, General Assembly seats .. 30 days after the election, or 3 days │ after a recount concludes, whichever │ is later † § 24.2-803 │ └─▸ ✱ THE STRUCTURAL FAULT: THE CONTEST CLOCK AND THE RECOUNT CLOCK ARE NOT THE SAME CLOCK, AND IN VIRGINIA THEY RUN IN THE WRONG ORDER. · recount petition .... within 10 days from certification † § 24.2-801 · contest notice ...... 5:00 p.m. on day 2 from certification † § 24.2-805 · and § 24.2-805 provides that the contest "SHALL NOT WAIT UPON THE RESULTS OF ANY RECOUNT." → The right to contest expires EIGHT DAYS BEFORE the right to petition for a recount does. A Virginia candidate must decide whether to challenge the count without the one procedure that would tell them whether to. → Nevada and Virginia's § 24.2-803 are the counter-design: both run the contest clock from the RECOUNT's conclusion, so the instruments nest. │ │ ⚑ AND THE CLOCK MOVED FOR THIS ELECTION WITHOUT ANY CONTEST LAW CHANGING. │ Where the contest deadline runs from certification, moving certification moves │ the contest window. Two states moved certification for 3 November 2026: │ · IDAHO — H 873 moves the county canvass deadline from 10 days to NINE │ · NEBRASKA — LB 1075 requires county results at the state by the third │ Monday after Election Day, where PREVIOUSLY THERE WAS NO DEADLINE │ [Wisconsin also changed its canvass law, but effective for 2028, to conform to │ the Electoral Count Reform Act — not in force this November.] │ ■ PART D — THE STANDARD OF PROOF (where the queue item said the variance would be, │ and it was right) │ ├─▸ STRICTEST — the result must necessarily flip │ ⊕ PENNSYLVANIA .... allegations that, if proven, would "DEFINITELY CHANGE │ THE RESULTS" ├─▸ MIDDLE — the result would have been different │ ⊕ NEVADA ......... illegalities "sufficient to change the result" │ ⊕ GENERAL RULE ... specific, credible evidence of fraud or irregularity "of │ such extent that it would actually have changed" the │ result; many jurisdictions require DIRECT EVIDENCE that │ the illegal votes went to the winner ├─▸ LOOSER — the result need only become unsafe │ ⊕ FLORIDA ........ misconduct, illegal votes counted, or legal votes rejected │ "sufficient to change OR PLACE IN DOUBT the result" │ † § 102.168(3)(a),(c) │ ✱ Florida is the only standard on this map a contestant can satisfy WITHOUT │ showing who would have won. Doubt is enough to state the claim. ├─▸ LOOSEST ON ITS FACE — a threshold for pleading, not for winning │ ⊕ VIRGINIA ....... "specific allegations which, if proven true, would have a │ PROBABLE IMPACT on the outcome" † § 24.2-807 └─▸ DIFFERENT QUESTION ENTIRELY ⊕ TEXAS .......... whether "the outcome ... is not the true outcome" because illegal votes were counted, or an election officer prevented voting, failed to count legal votes, or "engaged in other fraud or illegal conduct or made a mistake" † § 221.003 ✱ Texas does not ask the contestant to prove they won. It asks the tribunal to find the true outcome — and § 221.011 lets it void the election "WITHOUT ATTEMPTING TO DETERMINE HOW INDIVIDUAL VOTERS VOTED" once the illegal votes equal or exceed the margin. That is the only standard here that does not require tracing a single ballot to a single candidate. │ ■ PART E — THE REMEDY (four of them, and they are not interchangeable) │ ├─▸ ↪ DECLARE THE TRUE OUTCOME, OR VOID THE ELECTION │ TEXAS † § 221.012 — "If the tribunal ... can ascertain the true outcome of │ the election, the tribunal shall declare the outcome. The tribunal SHALL │ DECLARE THE ELECTION VOID IF IT CANNOT ASCERTAIN THE TRUE OUTCOME." │ ✱ The cleanest remedy on the map: a binary with no third option and no │ discretion. Costs are then split equally between the parties (§ 221.013). ├─▸ ↪ OUSTER, EXECUTED BY THE EXECUTIVE │ FLORIDA † § 102.1682 — "a judgment of ouster shall be entered"; on receiving │ a certified copy, "the Governor shall revoke such commission and commission │ the person found in the judgment to be entitled to the office." │ ✱ The court decides; the GOVERNOR performs the remedy. The judgment is not │ self-executing against the office. ├─▸ ↪ A MENU, CHOSEN BY A LEGISLATIVE BODY │ VIRGINIA † § 24.2-803 — the House may declare the CONTESTANT elected, confirm │ the CONTESTEE, void the election and order a new writ, or, on a tie, │ DETERMINE THE WINNER BY LOT. ├─▸ ↪ A NEW ELECTION │ NORTH CAROLINA — the board may authorize voters to re-cast, or order a NEW │ ELECTION, where ineligible or prevented voters exceed the margin or │ "irregularities taint the results." └─▸ ⊘ NOTHING Where the term has substantially run before the proceeding ends, and where no statute provides a remedy for the office in question, a proven contest produces a declaration and no seat. [The map does not quantify this; see Note 9 — it is the largest unmeasured cell on the page.] │ ■ PART F — THE HOLE AT THE TOP (the two federal offices on every November ballot) │ │ ✱ A STATE CONTEST CANNOT FINALLY RESOLVE A SEAT IN CONGRESS. U.S. Const. art. I │ § 5 cl. 1 makes each chamber "the Judge of the Elections, Returns and │ Qualifications of its own Members." The state proceeding produces evidence; │ the chamber produces the member. │ ├─▸ U.S. HOUSE — the Federal Contested Elections Act │ ◇ a candidate who lost by the state-certified result │ ⏱ notice of contest within 30 DAYS after the state election authority "has │ declared the results" [note: DECLARED, not certified — see Note 7] │ ⏱ contestee's answer within 30 days; non-response "shall not be deemed an │ admission of the truth" │ ⚖ the Committee on House Administration takes jurisdiction and may create a │ task force, direct an audit, or direct a RECOUNT — through the GAO │ ⚖ the HOUSE ITSELF decides, by vote │ ⊕ "The burden is upon contestant to prove that the election results entitle │ him to contestee's seat"; the state certification is PRESUMPTIVE evidence │ of validity that the contestant must overcome │ ✱ FCEA contests rarely change results. The structural reason is in the │ standard: the contestant must beat a presumption created by the very │ count they say is wrong. │ └─▸ U.S. SENATE — no FCEA analogue ⚖ the Senate, under the same art. I § 5 power, by its own procedure ? the Senate's modern practice is NOT mapped here — left [unconfirmed] rather than asserted. See Note 11. │ │ ✱ SO THE CROSSWALK HAS A HOLE EXACTLY WHERE THE STAKES ARE HIGHEST. Of the │ offices on a 3 November 2026 ballot, the ones a state contest cannot finish │ are the federal ones — and for presidential electors, Part A shows that two │ states hand even the state-side proceeding to a political officer. ``` ## Notes 1. **The forum column is a category error, and this is the map's central finding.** Virginia (§§ 24.2-803 to -806), Texas (§ 221.002) and Pennsylvania (25 P.S. § 3291) each route contests to four or five different tribunals depending on the office contested. Any fifty-state table that prints one forum per state has silently picked one office and generalised from it. The three states worked here were chosen because each publishes its routing in a single statute; the other forty-seven are not mapped, and Note 9 treats that as the map's main debt. 2. **Texas and Pennsylvania invert each other.** Texas § 221.002 gives each legislative chamber exclusive jurisdiction over contests for its own seats and sends the top five statewide offices to a joint session. Pennsylvania's constitution (art. VII § 13) sends contests for members of the General Assembly to "the courts of law," while 25 P.S. § 3312 sends the Governor and Lieutenant Governor to a joint legislative committee. There is no American default design here. Both are current law. 3. **Texas's presidential-elector tribunal is the Governor.** Tex. Elec. Code § 221.002 gives the Governor exclusive jurisdiction over a contest for the election of presidential electors. This is the single most unusual provision found. It is not a residual or a tie-breaker: the district court's otherwise-exclusive original jurisdiction is carved out for it. 4. **Virginia's contest clock expires before its recount clock does.** § 24.2-805 (presidential electors, U.S. Senate, statewide primaries) requires notice by 5:00 p.m. on the second calendar day after the State Board certifies, and provides that the contest "shall not wait upon the results of any recount." § 24.2-801 allows a recount petition "within 10 days from the day the State Board or the electoral board certifies." The two instruments are therefore sequenced backwards for these offices. Note that § 24.2-803, for General Assembly seats, does the opposite — 30 days from the election or three days after the recount concludes, whichever is later — so the same state nests the instruments correctly for one office and not for another. 5. **Virginia's three-judge court is drawn from non-contiguous circuits.** § 24.2-805 seats the chief judge of the Richmond circuit plus two circuit judges from circuits *not contiguous* to Richmond, appointed by the Chief Justice. This is the only venue rule found on this map that is explicitly designed to produce a bench with no local stake — a structural answer to the problem that a contest is tried where the contested votes were cast. 6. ⚑ **Two states moved the clock for this November without touching contest law.** Idaho's H 873 moves the county canvass deadline from 10 days to nine; Nebraska's LB 1075 requires county results at the state by the third Monday after Election Day, where previously no deadline existed. Both take effect for 3 November 2026. Where a contest deadline runs from certification — Florida, Virginia's § 24.2-805, Colorado, North Carolina — moving certification moves the contest window as a side effect. Wisconsin also changed its canvass law in 2026, but effective for the 2028 presidential election, to conform to the [[Electoral Count Reform Act]]. 7. **"Declared," not "certified," in the FCEA.** The Federal Contested Elections Act runs its 30-day notice period from the point at which the state authority "has declared the results." Whether a state's declaration and its certification are the same event is a state-law question, and this map does not resolve it — which means the federal deadline's start date is defined by fifty different state instruments. Flagged as an open question rather than asserted. 8. **Texas is the only standard that does not require tracing ballots to candidates.** § 221.011 allows the tribunal to declare the election void "without attempting to determine how individual voters voted" once illegal votes equal or exceed the number needed to change the outcome. Every other standard found here puts the contestant to proving who the bad votes went to — which, for a secret ballot, is the structural reason contests fail. Texas § 221.009 cuts the other way too: a voter shown to have voted illegally may be compelled to disclose their choice, the one place on this map where the secrecy of a ballot yields to a contest. 9. **The largest unmeasured cell is the "nothing" remedy.** How often a proven contest yields no seat because the term has run, or because no statute provides a remedy for that office, is not quantified in any source reviewed here. This is the fifty-state census this map identifies and does not do, and it is the highest-value follow-on work the page raises — the same shape as the tier-2 census the recount map left open and the fill-threshold census the ballot-marking map left open. 10. **Mississippi's famous provision is gone, and the correction matters.** Miss. Const. §§ 141 and 142 — the provisions under which the Mississippi House of Representatives selected a governor from the two highest vote-getters when no candidate won both an electoral and a popular majority — were **repealed by Laws of 2020, ch. 2021, effective 29 March 2021**, following Ballot Measure 2 (2020), which substituted a runoff. The single most-cited fact in circulation about state gubernatorial contests is five years out of date. Mississippi's *current* contest forum for Governor is **[unconfirmed]** here and was deliberately not guessed: Miss. Const. § 132 provides only that a Lieutenant Governor contest "shall be tried and determined in the same manner as a contest for the office of Governor," which points at a provision not retrieved here. 11. **The Senate side is [unconfirmed].** There is no Senate analogue to the FCEA. The Senate's art. I § 5 power is the same, but its modern contest practice — whether by resolution, by the Rules Committee, or by referral — has not been verified here and is marked rather than asserted. 12. **The two-source rule.** Texas § 221.002, § 221.003, § 221.009, § 221.011, § 221.012, § 221.013; Virginia §§ 24.2-801, -803, -804, -805, -806, -807, -811; Florida §§ 102.168 and 102.1682; Pennsylvania 25 P.S. §§ 3291 and 3312; and Pa. Const. art. VII § 13 were read from statutory text. Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania's 20-day deadline rest on the Congressional Research Service's survey (R44659) as a single source and are printed without a `†`. Where a cell had one source and that source was secondary, it is on the map only if the CRS survey states it directly. 13. **Ohio exempts presidential electors from its own contest procedure**, directing instead that such a contest "shall be conducted in accordance with applicable provisions of federal law" — a fourth design pattern alongside Texas's executive tribunal, Pennsylvania's class system and Virginia's special court: the state declines the question. Not placed in Part A because the statutory citation has not been retrieved. 14. **What this map does not cover.** Discovery — the column the queue item asked for — is not on the map. No state instrument read here states a discovery rule on the face of the contest statute; it follows the forum's ordinary procedure, which means a legislative tribunal supplies its own and a court supplies the civil rules. That is a real structural finding but it is an absence, and absences are reported in the Notes rather than drawn in the fence. Also absent: the bond and cost provisions beyond Virginia's per-precinct bonds (§ 24.2-803: $100 per precinct; § 24.2-804: $10 per precinct statewide) and Texas's equal split on a void (§ 221.013). ## See also - [[State Canvass Deadline Crosswalk]] — the map this one commissioned, and the answer to its own hidden variable: where the contest window runs from certification, this is the clock that sets the date certification happens, and it finds that only 31 states set an unconditional deadline for finishing the canvass at all - [[Recount Trigger Crosswalk]] · [[Post-Election Audit Crosswalk]] · [[Ballot Marking Validity Crosswalk]] · [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] - [[How a Conceded Election Is Finalized]] — the half of this page's standing rules that a concession touches: where the contest is confined to "one or more of the unsuccessful candidates" (Va. Code § 24.2-807), a concession leaves nobody who may bring it, while Fla. Stat. § 102.168(1) lets any qualified elector or taxpayer file the contest the candidate declined to bring - [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]] · [[Election Certification]] · [[Election Canvass]] · [[Recount]] · [[Election Contest]] - [[Federal Contested Elections Act]] · [[Electoral Count Reform Act]] · [[Help America Vote Act]] · [[Quo Warranto]] - [[Bush v. Gore]] · [[Electoral College Process Flow]] · [[State Election Administration Tree]] · [[How a Candidate Gets on the Ballot]] - [[Foundations Hub]] · [[2026 Midterms Hub]]