ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Republican Tom Emmer, trailing in the Minnesota governor’s race pending a likely recount, asked the state Supreme Court Wednesday to step in and order counties to determine if too many ballots were cast in some precincts.
Democrats called it a delaying tactic. Mark Dayton leads Emmer by about 8,700 votes, a margin close enough to trigger an automatic recount if certified by the state canvassing board Nov. 23.
But Emmer’s filing, coordinated with the state Republican Party, says the numbers may be inaccurate because some precincts failed to properly carry out a procedure called reconciliation. The process is designed to prevent ballot-stuffing by matching the number of ballots cast with the number of voters who sign log-in sheets.
His petition says a statewide review of the practice — and removal of “overage” ballots — could prevent a drawn-out court case after the recount.
“Without reconciliation, an election can be decided by ‘overage’ ballots rather than by one vote per registered voter,” the petition says.
The legal filing cites 11 election judges who say they didn’t see reconciliation happen correctly in the precincts where they worked. Their affidavits say officials counted unsigned voter receipts instead of the names in the signed voter logs at the end of election night, or didn’t count the number of voters at all.
The remedy for a ballot overage at the precinct level is for election officials to blindly remove ballots until the numbers match. It’s not clear how or whether Emmer would benefit from such a remedy wherever it’s applied, but state GOP Chairman Tony Sutton said the party thinks thousands of votes could be in play.
“I think this is a potential game-changer,” Sutton said. “It is a very important unresolved issue.”
Dayton recount chief Ken Martin said there have been no indications so far that Minnesota’s election system failed in any major way. He called the latest legal move an effort to delay the start of the recount and ultimately the seating of the next governor.
“This is about damaging the ability of the winner of this election to govern,” Martin said. “That’s un-Minnesotan and it’s wrong.”
Martin said Dayton’s attorneys were still examining the legal filing and would have more specific comment later, but he said there’s been no evidence to suggest a scenario in which enough mistakes were made in the counting of ballots to erase Dayton’s current lead.
The filing asks the Supreme Court to order the state canvassing board to require a statewide review of the number of valid ballots and force local officials to pull out random ballots in precincts where reconciliation didn’t happen.
Blue Earth County elections director Patty O’Connor said precincts in her south-central Minnesota county did complete their reconciliation on election night.
“To make us redo what our elections judges did on election night is just a huge waste of our resources,” O’Connor said. “If they say I have to do it, I have to do it. But it just seems like a huge waste when it’s already been done in the precincts by the election judges.”
The tentative schedule for a recount would begin Nov. 29, with possible certification of a winner Dec. 14. The next governor is to be sworn in Jan. 3, with the Legislature convening the next day.
Democrats have raised concerns that the GOP may seek to string out the governor’s recount with a broad lawsuit, effectively keeping outgoing GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty in office just as new Republican majorities take over both houses.
Sutton said it’s possible the reconciliation could be done before the recount is scheduled to start.
“It’s better we bring this up now rather than an election contest phase,” Sutton said.
Emmer has vowed not to drag the election on longer than necessary, but he has also said processes must be followed to ensure votes are counted fairly. He has not ruled out a court challenge following the recount.
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Associated Press writer Jeff Baenen contributed to this report in Minneapolis.
