Here are the recount laws in 7 key swing states before the Trump-Harris election
Some states automatically launch a recount if the results are within a certain margin, while others rely on candidates to ask for one.
The 2024 election looks extremely close in the polls. And if the actual results are that close after Election Day, it's possible the results in a key state could hinge on a recount.
The rules about when recounts happen and the procedures they include vary from state to state, since elections are administered locally. Those rules were in the spotlight in 2020, after Joe Biden won a handful of key battleground states by a razor-thin margin.
Former President Donald Trump requested, and was granted, recounts in a few of these states, but none of them changed the outcome of the election there. Typically, recounts only slightly change the final margin of a race, but when the vote is close enough, they can have a real effect.
Ahead of Election Day, here's a refresher of the recount rules in the states expected to be the closest in the presidential race.
Candidates don't request recounts in Arizona, but the state requires an automatic recount if a race is decided by a margin within (or equal to) less than 0.5% of votes cast in a race. The threshold was lower in 2020 (0.1%), but since then, the state enacted a law raising the automatic recount threshold to 0.5%.
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