The Colorado Secretary of State's office said their regulations required any recounts to be done by machine and that it'd cost $236,000. When the two candidates didn't pay that fee in time, the state proceeded with certification of their losses.
On Tuesday, the Secretary of State's office released letters from Peters and Hanks insisting it wrongly rejected their hand recount requests, citing security flaws in voting machines used in Colorado. That has been a central part of the conspiracy theories the two candidates have promulgated. The Secretary of State's office had said those machines weren't used in the primary, but the two candidates disagreed.