A 100-vote Louisville-area House race is headed for an automatic recount under a law the winner pushed for

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (Nov. 11) — One of the closest legislative races in Kentucky this year will be counted a second time.

Unofficial results show Republican Rep. John Hodgson of Fisherville beating Democrat William "Woody" Zorn by 100 votes in House District 36, which covers Eastwood, Fisherville and parts of Jeffersontown. That margin is under half a percentage point, so state law requires a recount paid for by the state, WHAS11 reported.

The Jefferson County Board of Elections will start the recount at 8:30 a.m. Monday, Nov. 16, at the county's election warehouse. It will cover every precinct in the district, mail-in ballots and votes cast at the Kentucky Expo Center, which served as a vote center for the first time this year, Spectrum News 1 reported. County Clerk David Yates said the ballots will most likely go back through a high-speed counting machine.

There's a twist: Hodgson advocated for the automatic recount law before he first won the seat, unopposed, in 2022, according to WHAS11. He had earlier served as operations director for former Gov. Matt Bevin.

It's also not Zorn's first recount. His five-vote win in the 2024 Democratic primary triggered one, too. In that year's general election, Hodgson beat him by roughly 4,000 votes.

Yates said he doesn't expect the result to change. "It's very unlikely there'll be any change," he told Spectrum News 1, adding that the race shows why every vote matters.

If Zorn did come out ahead, he'd be the 10th Democrat to flip a General Assembly seat this year. Republicans keep supermajorities in both chambers either way. Yates said he expects this to be the only recount in Jefferson County, and no other legislative race statewide appears close enough to trigger one.