The election results for House District 43 will be recounted after the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office on Thursday accepted a recount request from Republican Rep. Kurt Huffman.

Based on the uncertified election results, Democratic candidate Robert “Bob” Marshall won the House District 43 seat in Douglas County, beating Huffman by 405 votes. Marshall received 22,877 votes, or 50.45% of ballots cast, and Huffman received 22,472 votes, or 49.55%.

That margin of victory is too large to mandate an automatic recount – which is triggered only when the margin between the two top-finishers is 0.5% or less of the leading candidate’s vote total. Huffman requested a recount on Monday and paid the $738 that the operation will cost Douglas County on Wednesday.

Douglas County was notified to begin the recount on Thursday and must complete it by Dec. 15, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.

At Huffman’s request, the recount will be conducted via readjudication, meaning only the ballots that needed to be reexamined by election judges during the initial count will be examined in the recount, to ensure the human adjudications were accurate. 

House District 43 is one of five state House seats that flipped from Republican to Democratic representation in the November election. Democrats now control 46 of the 65 seats in the state House of Representatives. 

Republican Huffman is technically the district’s incumbent, though he only assumed the seat in June after a vacancy committee selected him to take over for Kevin Van Winkle, a Highlands Ranch Republican who moved from the state House to the state Senate to fill another vacancy.

Democrat Marshall is an attorney and Marine Corps veteran of 28 years. 

House District 43 is one of the most politically competitive districts in the state. The Douglas County district leans 7.4% Republican, making it the 15th most evenly split district, according to a report from the redistricting commission.

The district’s active registered voters are 45.3% unaffiliated, followed by 31.3% Republican and 22.1% Democrat.