# State Recount Waiver Crosswalk [[Recount Trigger Crosswalk]] maps when an American election gets recounted and finds that the automatic recount is the only tier that protects a losing candidate who has run out of money, run out of lawyers, or conceded. This page maps the exit from that tier — the **recount waiver**, a written filing by which the defeated candidate asks that the recount the state has already ordered not be made. It is not a concession, and a concession does not accomplish it. The working prediction was that the waiver would be a minor procedural footnote with one interesting column, the deadline. Two of those three assumptions were wrong. The waiver is **not** a single instrument: in three states it is a condition on the state's duty and in three it is a waiver of the candidate's own right, which is a different legal act with different implications about whose recount it is. And the deadline, which is the column the prediction was built around, turns out to be the column least likely to decide anything. On the one recent occasion when a statutory waiver window closed and the losing candidate wanted the recount stopped anyway, the recount stopped — eight days late, by administrative instruction rather than by the statute. The finding underneath both of those is the direction of the power. In seven states the automatic recount is the only second count available, because those states have no candidate-initiated recount at all. **Four of the seven give the losing candidate a switch, and it only turns off.** A loser in Pennsylvania, Florida or South Carolina cannot ask for a recount under any circumstances and can cancel one at will — which inverts the usual complaint about recounts. The question is not who can force a second count; it is who can quietly prevent one that the law had already required. > [!note] How to read this crosswalk > `■` marks a part · `▸` marks a column or lane · `☐` marks that the instrument is a **written filing**, not a statement, a phone call or a concession · `⊘` marks something the statute does not provide — no waiver, no deadline, no notice duty · `◎` marks **the hinge: the point where the statute stops and an administrative decision governs the outcome instead** · `⏳` marks a deadline the statute actually states · ` marks who pays for the count being switched off · `✱` marks the structural point of a block · `★` marks the only state on the map where something is true · `◈` marks **a count derived on this page rather than published anywhere** · `[bracketed]` notes are dated caveats. Everything inside the fence is a statute, a state or a date — **no officeholder is named anywhere on this map**, by design, so it stays true as seats turn over. ``` STATE RECOUNT WAIVER CROSSWALK — the six states where the defeated candidate can switch off a public recount, and the deadline that did not hold (as of 2 November 2026) │ Legend: ▸ column or lane │ ☐ the instrument is a WRITTEN FILING, not a statement or a concession │ ⊘ the instrument does not exist in this state's statute │ ◎ the hinge — where the statute stops and an administrative │ decision governs the outcome instead │ ⏳ a deadline the statute actually states │ $ who pays for the count being switched off │ ✱ the structural point of the block │ ★ the only state on this map where that is true │ ◈ a count derived here rather than published anywhere │ [bracketed] notes are dated caveats │ │ THE ONE-LINE VERSION: IN SEVEN STATES AN AUTOMATIC RECOUNT IS THE ONLY SECOND │ COUNT A LOSING CANDIDATE CAN GET, AND IN FOUR OF THEM THAT CANDIDATE CAN ALSO │ CANCEL IT. The power runs one way: nowhere on this map can the loser ask for a │ recount, and in six states the loser can stop one. Read Part D before trusting │ any deadline here — on the one recent occasion the deadline was tested, it │ governed the filing and not the result. │ ■ PART A — THE SIX STATES WHERE THE DEFEATED CANDIDATE CAN SWITCH IT OFF │ ├─▸ PENNSYLVANIA ................................ 25 P.S. § 3154(h) │ ☐ "A recount and recanvass shall not be ordered ... if the defeated │ candidate requests in writing that a recount and recanvass not be made." │ ▸ who may file: the defeated candidate, singular │ ⏳ "by 12 o'clock noon on the second Wednesday following the election" — │ and the order itself is due by 5 p.m. on the second THURSDAY, so the │ window shuts about twenty-nine hours before the duty attaches │ ⊘ ballot questions: the waiver reaches subsection (g)(1)(i) only, which is │ the candidate trigger. A question approved or rejected by the same │ half-point margin recounts and nobody can stop it. │ $ the Commonwealth. A completed statewide recount was estimated above │ $1 million in 2024. │ ✱ THE ONLY STATE ON THIS MAP WHOSE WAIVER CLOCK IS SET BY THE CALENDAR │ RATHER THAN BY THE CANVASS, AND THE ONLY ONE THAT HAS BEEN TESTED. │ ├─▸ MICHIGAN .................................... Mich. Comp. Laws § 168.880a(6) │ ☐ the recount "must not be conducted if, within 48 hours after the │ election is certified, the losing candidate files a written statement │ with the secretary of state requesting that the recount ... not be │ conducted" │ ▸ who may file: the losing candidate — ★ OR A LOSING BALLOT QUESTION │ COMMITTEE, which has the same option in the same subsection │ ⏳ 48 hours after certification. Keyed to the canvass, not to election │ day, so the date moves when the canvass moves. │ ★ THE ONLY STATE FOUND WHERE A BALLOT-QUESTION RECOUNT CAN BE SWITCHED │ OFF AT ALL, AND THE ONLY ONE WHERE THE FILER NEED NOT BE A PERSON. │ ▸ triggers: 0.1% statewide · 75 votes or fewer for state senate · 25 or │ fewer for state representative │ ├─▸ FLORIDA ..................................... Fla. Stat. § 102.141(7) │ ☐ "A recount need not be ordered with respect to the returns for any │ office ... if the candidate or candidates defeated or eliminated from │ contention ... request in writing that a recount not be made." │ ▸ who may file: EVERY candidate inside the half-point margin. The plural │ is the operative word — one trailing candidate cannot switch it off │ over another trailing candidate's objection. │ ⊘ deadline: none stated anywhere in the subsection │ ⊘ ballot questions: the waiver clause names offices only. The same │ subsection's recount duty for measures and judicial-retention │ questions has no comparable exit. │ ├─▸ SOUTH CAROLINA .............................. S.C. Code § 7-17-280 │ ☐ no recount is required if "such other candidate or candidates shall │ waive a recount in writing" │ ▸ who may file: again every other candidate inside the one-point margin │ ⊘ deadline: none. The recount is otherwise ordered "forthwith", which is │ a speed instruction and not a date, so the waiver races an unscheduled │ duty. │ ⊘ ballot questions: amendments, questions and other issues are recounted │ on order of the Board of State Canvassers, with no waiver clause. │ ├─▸ CONNECTICUT ................................. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 9-311a │ ☐ the defeated candidate files a written statement "waiving this right to │ such canvass" │ ▸ where it is filed: ★ TWO DIFFERENT OFFICES BY RACE — the municipal │ clerk for a municipal office, the Secretary of the State for a state or │ district office │ ⊘ deadline: none stated in the section │ ✱ Connecticut calls the recanvass the candidate's RIGHT. See Part C. │ └─▸ NEBRASKA .................................... Neb. Rev. Stat. § 32-1119(2) ☐ "Any losing candidate may waive his or her right to a recount by filing a written statement with the Secretary of State, election commissioner, or county clerk with whom he or she made his or her filing." ▸ where it is filed: whichever office the candidate filed to run with — the statute routes the waiver by the candidacy rather than by the race ⊘ deadline: none stated $ "all expenses of a recount under this section shall be paid by those political subdivisions involved" — so the thing being waived is a publicly funded count, and the statute still calls it the loser's right │ ■ PART B — THE FIVE WHERE NOBODY CAN │ ├─▸ ARIZONA ..................................... A.R.S. § 16-661 │ a recount "is required" at a margin within one-half of one per cent of │ the votes cast for both candidates. ⊘ NO WAIVER APPEARS ANYWHERE IN THE │ SECTION. What the statute does instead is remove whole offices from the │ duty: precinct committeemen, school and community-college boards, fire │ districts and other special districts are exempt by subsection (B). │ ✱ Arizona switches recounts off by OFFICE, in advance, by statute — │ never by a candidate, and never after the votes are in. │ ├─▸ NEW YORK .................................... N.Y. Elec. Law § 9-208(4) │ the board "shall conduct a full manual recount" on any one of three │ triggers: a margin of twenty votes or fewer · a margin of 0.5% or less · │ or a contest of a million ballots or more decided by under 5,000 votes. │ ⊘ no waiver, and ⊘ no concession exception. A conceded race inside any of │ the three triggers is recounted by hand regardless. │ ├─▸ HAWAII ...................................... HRS § 11-158 │ the chief election officer "shall conduct a recount", completed and │ announced by the fifth business day after the election, and "no candidate │ shall be charged for the cost of a mandatory recount". ⊘ no waiver. │ ✱ The one state that both pays for the count and refuses to let the │ beneficiary decline it, which is the clearest statement on the map that │ the recount is owed to the public rather than to the loser. │ ├─▸ WASHINGTON .................................. RCW 29A.64.021 │ mandatory below 2,000 votes AND below 0.5%. ⊘ no waiver — but ★ THE ONLY │ STATE HERE WHERE THE WINNER HAS ANY SAY AT ALL: under subsection (3) "the │ apparent winning candidate and the next leading candidate may jointly │ choose to request an alternative method of conducting the recount." │ ✱ The candidates together may change HOW the ballots are recounted and │ neither may stop the recount. Method is negotiable; existence is not. │ └─▸ COLORADO .................................... C.R.S. § 1-10.5-101(1)(b) a recount "shall be held" where the gap is at or under one-half of one percent of the HIGHEST vote cast in the contest. ⊘ nothing in subsection (1) or (2) lets anyone decline it. The interested-party route at § 1-10.5-106 runs the other way: it is how someone GETS a recount, at their own expense. [§ 1-10.5-106 was not read in full for this map.] │ ■ PART C — ONE NAME, THREE DIFFERENT LEGAL ACTS │ ├─▸ (a) A CONDITION ON THE STATE'S DUTY ......... Pa. · Fla. · Mich. │ The statute speaks to the officer: the recount "shall not be ordered", │ "need not be ordered", "must not be conducted". The candidate's filing is │ a fact that switches off somebody else's obligation. │ ├─▸ (b) A WAIVER OF THE CANDIDATE'S OWN RIGHT ... Conn. · Neb. · S.C. │ The statute speaks to the candidate: the losing candidate "may waive his │ or her right". This presupposes the recount exists for the candidate's │ benefit, and a right is the holder's to give away. │ └─▸ (c) ✱ THE DIFFERENCE IS NOT COSMETIC, AND IT IS THE FINDING OF THIS PART. A duty owed to the public is not a losing candidate's to release; a personal right is. Two of these states write a recount PAID FOR BY THE PUBLIC as the loser's own property — Nebraska says so in the same section that charges the political subdivisions for it. Nothing in either design asks what the voters in the contest are owed, and no statute on this map gives them anyone to ask. │ ■ PART D — THE DEADLINE, AND THE ONE TIME IT WAS TESTED │ ├─ ONLY TWO OF THE SIX STATE A DEADLINE AT ALL. Pennsylvania sets a calendar │ date and hour; Michigan sets a 48-hour clock off certification. Florida, │ South Carolina, Connecticut and Nebraska ⊘ state none, which means the │ practical limit in those four is whenever the count is finished. │ ├─ THE 2024 PENNSYLVANIA SENATE SEQUENCE, which is the whole argument for why │ this column is the one that matters: │ │ 5 Nov election. Margin under 0.25%, about 16,500 votes, inside the │ half-point trigger │ 13 Nov ⏳ NOON — the § 3154(h) window closes. No waiver is filed. │ 13 Nov evening — the recount is ordered statewide. Estimated cost above │ $1 million. │ 20 Nov the recount begins in the counties │ 21 Nov evening — the trailing candidate concedes and asks the state to │ end the recount. ◎ THIS IS EIGHT DAYS AFTER THE STATUTORY WINDOW │ CLOSED, SO THE INSTRUMENT IN PART A WAS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. │ 21 Nov counties are told that night that they need not finish. About │ ten had already completed their recounts. │ 22 Nov the state announces the recount is over. │ ├─ ◎ THE HINGE. The statute's deadline governed the FILING and did not govern │ the OUTCOME. What stopped the recount was not the waiver instrument but an │ administrative decision to honour a request the statute no longer │ authorised — announced in the language of saving taxpayers money, which is │ the reasoning the deadline exists to take out of anyone's hands. │ └─ ✱ SO THE REAL COLUMN IS NOT "WHAT IS THE DEADLINE" BUT "IS ANYONE BOUND BY IT." On the only recent occasion when the two answers differed, the second one decided. A deadline no court was asked to enforce is a deadline that held for eight days and then did not. │ ■ PART E — THE FILING AND ITS CLOCK, ELEVEN STATES READ │ STATE WHAT THE FILING IS WHEN IT IS DUE │ --------------- ----------------------------------------- ----------------------- │ Pennsylvania written request that the recount noon, 2nd Wednesday │ and recanvass not be made after the election │ Michigan written statement requesting the 48 hours after the │ recount not be conducted election is certified │ Florida written request that a recount not stated │ not be made in the statute │ South Carolina written waiver of a recount not stated │ Connecticut written statement waiving the not stated │ right to the recanvass │ Nebraska written statement waiving the not stated │ right to a recount │ --------------- ----------------------------------------- ----------------------- │ Arizona no such filing exists -- │ New York no such filing exists -- │ Hawaii no such filing exists -- │ Washington no such filing exists; the two -- │ candidates may jointly pick the │ method, not cancel the count │ Colorado no such filing exists -- │ ■ PART F — WHAT NO WAIVER ON THIS MAP REACHES │ ├─ A BALLOT QUESTION, IN EVERY STATE BUT ONE. Pennsylvania, Florida and South │ Carolina each write the waiver for offices and leave the question recount │ running; Michigan alone hands the same switch to a ballot question │ committee. ✱ The reason is structural rather than principled: a question │ has no defeated candidate to do the asking, and only Michigan went looking │ for a substitute. │ ├─ ⊘ THE RECOUNT THE LOSER WANTS. The power on this map runs one direction │ only. In Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania and │ South Carolina there is no candidate-initiated recount at all, so a losing │ candidate's entire statutory authority over the second count is the │ authority to cancel one. ✱ Four of those seven states give the loser a │ switch that only turns off. │ ├─ A RECOUNT ALREADY UNDER WAY. ⊘ No statute read here says what becomes of │ one. Pennsylvania's window shuts before the order issues, so on the │ statute's own timetable the question cannot arise; it arose anyway in 2024 │ and was answered by an instruction to the counties. │ ├─ THE ELECTION CONTEST. Waiving a recount is not conceding and does not │ forfeit a contest in court, which is a separate instrument with its own │ standing rules and its own clock. │ ├─ ⊘ THE PUBLIC. No statute on this map requires the waiver to be published, │ docketed or served on anyone, and none requires that the voters in the │ contest be told that a recount their state had ordered was called off at │ the request of the person who lost it. │ └─ ◈ THE OTHER THIRTY-NINE STATES. Eleven statutes are read on this page and the column is unmapped in the rest. That is a gap in the published record rather than in this page: the fifty-state recount tables in circulation carry triggers, thresholds, costs and completion deadlines, and the standard reference brief on recounts does not mention waiver at all. ``` ## Notes 1. **The six waiver states and the five without one are statutory readings, not a tally of all fifty.** The eleven states here were chosen because each has a margin-triggered recount that the state orders on its own, which is the only kind of recount a waiver can reach. Six provide an exit: Pennsylvania (25 P.S. § 3154(h)), Michigan (Mich. Comp. Laws § 168.880a(6)), Florida (Fla. Stat. § 102.141(7)), South Carolina (S.C. Code § 7-17-280), Connecticut (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 9-311a) and Nebraska (Neb. Rev. Stat. § 32-1119(2)). Five do not: Arizona (A.R.S. § 16-661), New York (N.Y. Elec. Law § 9-208(4)), Hawaii (HRS § 11-158), Washington (RCW 29A.64.021) and Colorado (C.R.S. § 1-10.5-101). The remaining states are not claimed either way. 2. **"The candidate or candidates" is the most consequential plural on the map.** Florida and South Carolina both write the waiver so that it takes every candidate inside the triggering margin, which in a crowded primary can be several people. Pennsylvania writes "the defeated candidate", singular, for a trigger that in practice concerns a two-candidate statewide race. Michigan writes "the losing candidate". None of the three says what happens if one trailing candidate files and another refuses, and in Florida and South Carolina the natural reading is that the recount proceeds. 3. **Michigan's 48-hour clock is the only one that moves.** Pennsylvania's deadline is a date and an hour fixed by the calendar — noon on the second Wednesday after the election — and arrives whether or not any county has finished counting. Michigan's runs 48 hours from certification by the Board of State Canvassers, so a slow canvass postpones the waiver window along with everything else. The two designs answer opposite questions: Pennsylvania asks how long the public should wait for a decision, Michigan asks how long the candidate should have after learning the certified number. 4. **Michigan is also the only place a ballot question's recount can be switched off, and the filer is a committee.** Mich. Comp. Laws § 168.880a(6) gives a losing ballot question committee the same written-statement option it gives a losing candidate. Pennsylvania's waiver reaches only the candidate branch of its trigger; Florida's waiver clause names offices and the same subsection's measure and judicial-retention recounts have no exit; South Carolina's waiver sits in the candidate sentence and not in the Board of State Canvassers sentence that governs amendments and questions. So across these states a question approved or rejected by a hair is recounted no matter who would rather it were not — except in Michigan, where an organisation that is not a voter, a candidate or an official can stop it. 5. **Washington is the one state where the winner is in the room.** RCW 29A.64.021(3) lets the apparent winning candidate and the next leading candidate **jointly** request an alternative method of conducting a recount that would otherwise be a hand count. It is the only provision found on this map that gives the leading candidate any procedural say, and it is deliberately not a cancellation: the two can agree on how the ballots are recounted and neither can agree that they should not be. 6. **Hawaii is the cleanest statement of the opposite theory.** HRS § 11-158 both forbids charging a candidate for a mandatory recount and provides no way for a candidate to decline it, and § 11-158(f) says a recount under the section is not an election contest. Read together, the section treats the recount as a public verification of the state's own number rather than a service rendered to the loser — which is exactly the premise Nebraska's and Connecticut's "right to a recount" language denies. 7. **The 2024 Pennsylvania sequence is reconstructed from contemporaneous reporting and the statute, and the two do not line up.** The statutory window closed at noon on 13 November 2024 with no waiver filed, and the recount was ordered that evening. On the evening of 21 November the trailing candidate conceded and asked the Department of State to end the recount; counties were told that night that they need not finish, about ten having already completed theirs, and the state announced the following day that the recount was over. Two independent accounts describe the request as a request to the Department rather than a § 3154(h) filing, and neither cites the subsection. The estimated cost of a completed statewide recount was above $1 million. What the episode demonstrates is not that the statute was broken — nobody appears to have asked a court — but that the deadline was not the operative constraint. 8. **The waiver has no public side anywhere on this map.** None of the six statutes requires the filing to be published, entered on a docket, served on the other candidates, or reported to the voters in the contest. The practical consequence is that the clearest signal a recount was cancelled is its absence, which only a reader who knew the margin would notice. This is the sharpest contrast with the trigger side of the same statutes, where the threshold, the order and usually the result are all public. 9. **No fifty-state table of this column appears to exist.** The standard reference brief on recounts tabulates automatic-recount provisions, thresholds, who may request a recount, who pays and completion deadlines, and does not mention waiver at all; the major encyclopedic survey's state pages are organised the same way. That absence is the reason this page reads statutes directly and the reason it stops at eleven of them. Compare [[Recount Trigger Crosswalk]], which found the published tables disagreeing with each other by eight states on a column they all do carry. 10. **One trigger figure on a neighbouring page needs re-checking and is not relied on here.** Hawaii's mandatory-recount threshold is rendered on the state's current statute page with a "whichever is lesser" comparator, where [[Recount Trigger Crosswalk]] records the 2019 amendment as reading "whichever is greater" — a difference that selects opposite clauses in any contest above 40,000 votes. Nothing on this page turns on it, because this page maps the exit rather than the trigger, and it is noted so the discrepancy is not lost. [Flagged 2 November 2026.] 11. **Questions left open.** Whether any of the thirty-nine unread states has a waiver provision, and whether any has one that reaches ballot questions as Michigan's does. Whether a waiver filed by one trailing candidate and opposed by another has ever been litigated in Florida or South Carolina. Whether Pennsylvania's noon deadline has ever been enforced against a late request, as opposed to honoured. Whether any state has ever refused such a request. How many automatic recounts are quietly waived each cycle, which is unanswerable from public records precisely because of Note 8. And whether the Michigan ballot-question waiver has ever been used, which would be the first case of a recount cancelled by an organisation rather than a person. ## See also - [[Recount Trigger Crosswalk]] — the map this page is the exit from: when a recount happens at all, the three tiers, and why no two published threshold columns are comparable - [[How a Conceded Election Is Finalized]] — what a concession does and does not accomplish, which is the distinction Part A turns on: the waiver is a filing, the concession is a speech, and only one of them stops a recount - [[State Election Contest Crosswalk]] — the instrument a waiver does not forfeit, and the forum a losing candidate still has after the second count is cancelled - [[Post-Election Audit Crosswalk]] — the other check on a certified number, and the one that in most states has no mechanism to change it - [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]] — the canvass whose completion starts Michigan's 48-hour clock and whose calendar Pennsylvania's deadline ignores - [[How a Tie Vote Is Broken]] — where an exact tie is the only automatic trigger, so the recount is certain to confirm the arithmetic that fired it - [[State Election Administration Tree]] — the officials who receive these filings, and why Connecticut and Nebraska route them to two different offices - [[Recount]] — the term page this map is additive to - [[2026 Midterms Hub]] — the 3 November 2026 contests where the margins on this page are live