Skip to content

Sunday, Nov. 15, 2020

Do campaign-finance rules apply to post-election expenses for recounts?

Esther Honig, Gigafact Foundry
yes

A state election recount can cost millions of dollars, which is why candidates often seek supporters' donations to pay for them. Officially, they cannot use this earmarked money for other purposes. The Federal Election Commission regulates recount fund donations, setting contribution limits and reporting requirements, and ensuring the money is used for relevant expenses like vote-counter compensation and post-election litigation.

In 23 of the 43 states which allow a candidate to request a recount, the candidate must pay for it. In 12 states, the candidate must pay if the margins are deemed too wide to justify a recount.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.