Many hands, little recount change
Minnesota got its recount on again Monday and little changed in the vote totals for the governor’s race between DFLer Mark Dayton and Republican Tom Emmer.By: News-Chronicle, Forum Newspapers, Lake County News Chronicle
- Recount
- Ballot Box
- Steve McMahon
- Judge Mary Jane VanDenHeuvel
Minnesota got its recount on again Monday and little changed in the vote totals for the governor’s race between DFLer Mark Dayton and Republican Tom Emmer.
The vote changed little by Tuesday. With 70 percent of the state’s 2.1 million votes recounted by Tuesday night, Dayton slipped slightly, but remained in control of the race.
Unofficial secretary of state vote totals showed Dayton down 38 votes from before the recount and Emmer down one, giving Dayton 8,733 more votes than Emmer. Going into the recount, Dayton led by 8,770.
In Lake County, the one-day recount of 5,611 ballots Monday gave Dayton a three-vote gain. Only one ballot hit the challenge pile. Dayton had 3,254 votes in the recount to Emmer’s 1,768.
Emmer’s representatives challenged 597 Dayton votes across the state by Tuesday while Dayton’s people challenged 143 for Emmer. If the challenged ballot procedure plays out as usual, most of those votes eventually will be rewarded to their original candidate, giving Dayton a bigger advantage.
Seventy-six of Minnesota’s 87 counties had completed their counts by Tuesday night.
In the lake County count, election officials said some lessons were likely learned in the 2008 recount in the U.S. Senate race between eventual winner Al Franken and Norm Coleman. The ballots were cleaner, with fewer stray marks, they said.
The one challenged ballot had ovals filled in for Emmer and Tom Horner with a crossout of the Horner oval. County auditor Steve McMahon said he sided with the election judges in calling it an overvote, meaning no candidate got the vote. The Emmer observers challenged the ruling as a vote for their candidate and the Dayton camp then chimed in, saying it thought it was an overvote. It will likely go to the canvassing board.
McMahon said the 2008 recount had many more challenges and discussion. Early in the recount Monday, observers requested that the election judges show both sides of the ballot to assure there were no distinguishing marks on any ballots. McMahon said any ballot with a name or other identifying mark could be tossed out. He said that by the lunch break, with no such marked ballots found, election judges were allowed to merely show the side with the list of governor candidates, speeding up the process.
The count went to about 3:30 and including an hour-long lunch break. Two tables with three election judges were set up in the conference room at the Lake County Law Enforcement Center, part of the courthouse complex. The 2008 count went on a bit longer with the many challenges and about 1,300 more ballots to count.
By 3 p.m., as the recount wound down, observers from both campaigns chuckled with election officials. They were at the end of the monotony of the count: Dayton-Emmer-Other-Dayton-Dayton-Emmer.
Dayton, holding his statewide recount lead of nearly 9,000 votes, is off to the annual Democratic Governors’ Association meeting as he prepares to be governor. Dayton has been careful not to act too much like a governor-elect, but says he expects to win and has a transition team in place.
Emmer, who largely remains out of sight, has turned most of the recount duties over to the Republican Party. He downplays his transition efforts and Republican leaders have been less visible during the election recount than Dayton’s team.
On Tuesday, Republican Chairman Tony Sutton made it clear the Emmer team is considering an election lawsuit following the recount that began Monday.
“This is a steep mountain for Tom Emmer to climb and it is getting more steep every day,” said Ken Martin, who directs Dayton’s recount team and says Dayton really has gained more votes than the secretary of state indicates.
No Minnesota politician has overcome a recount deficit as large as Emmer faces.
Sutton admitted that the recount may not produce enough votes for Emmer to win, but he said Republican attorneys are gathering evidence that could be used in a court challenge after a governor winner is declared, likely on Dec. 14.
At this point, Sutton said, he does not know whether he would advise Emmer to take the election to court.
Republicans could base a court challenge on several issues, Sutton said, including what the GOP says is a failure to properly reconcile the number of votes with the number of voters on election day. He also said there are questions about whether people violated a law that allows a voter to tell election officials that others are eligible to vote.
The party chairman said lawyers are looking at other potential legal problems, but he would not elaborate.
“We are behind, to be frank,” Sutton said. “We need to look aggressively to make sure every single Emmer vote is being counted.”
One example of the aggressive counting was in Renville County Monday, where an Emmer representative questioned election officials’ decisions on 423 Dayton ballots. All but one challenge were ruled to be frivolous, and thus the ballots were counted.
Sutton said Republican lawyers will look at the challenged Renville ballots and decide whether to withdraw the challenges. Most were questioned because write-in votes could be considered as identifying the voter, which is against state law, he added.
While election officials recount each of the 2.1 million ballots, Emmer and Dayton representatives are watching and sometimes challenging an election official’s judgment about who the voter intended to pick. Those challenged ballots are to be counted starting next week by the State Canvassing Board.
Few problems were reported Tuesday, even in DFL-dominated St. Louis County, a target for the Republicans. Elections Director Patricia Stolee said county officials are on schedule to finish re-counting ballots by Thursday.
The state wants to review challenges Friday.
More than half the county’s ballots were counted by the end of the day Tuesday with only seven ballot challenges for the day. The recount has been within a vote or two of the Election Day count.
A Dayton recount report indicated there may be “possible vote discrepancies” in Dakota County, with some votes “showing up in the wrong precincts.”
Republicans sent 600 volunteers around the state Monday, fewer on Tuesday since most counties had wrapped up their work. Eight or nine people manned the GOP recount headquarters.
For Dayton, nearly 1,000 volunteers scattered around the state Tuesday, with 50 to 60 in the Democrat’s headquarters.
Tags: election 2010, news, elections, fccnetwork
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