Ortiz asks for a recount

Rep. Solomon Ortiz, one of three Texas Congressional Democrats to be defeated on Tuesday, has asked for a recount.

U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, trailing Republican challenger Blake Farenthold by 792 votes in the race for Texas’ 27th District, officially announced in a written statement late Friday afternoon that he would seek a manual recount, citing what he called “numerous voting irregularities.”

The call for a recount came after provisional ballot totals and outstanding military-vote estimates showed that even if all of those votes went for Ortiz, the congressman was still unlikely to pull ahead.

“It is my utmost desire to ensure that the votes of the people of South Texas be cast and counted and that no vote be left out. Therefore, we’ve begun putting together the documents necessary to request a recount,” Ortiz wrote in a statement.

792 votes is a small margin – Ortiz lost by 0.75 percentage points – and as such it’s perfectly normal to ask for a recount. I just would not expect anything to come of it. I’ve seen a bunch of these requests over the past eight years, some for margins much smaller than this – see Holm/Daily in 2003, Vo/Heflin in 2004, and Harper-Brown/Romano in 2008 for three examples – and only one time has it made a difference for the person that was originally trailing. That was the Ciro Rodriguez/Henry Cueller primary race of 2004, and it came with a set of bizarre and unique circumstances. I wish Rep. Ortiz the best, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope.

Two side notes of interest: One, the Libertarian candidate in this race got over 5% of the vote. If you believe, as some do, that Libertarians take votes from Republicans, then Ortiz’s margin might have been larger had this been a two-person race. If you believe, as I do, that Libertarians take votes from incumbents as much as they do from Republicans, then one can make a case that Ortiz might have won a two-person race. Two, Ortiz’s son Solomon, Jr, a State Rep in Nueces County, also lost. Tough week for the Ortiz family, that’s for sure.

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