Gubernatorial recount to start Nov. 29

With a recount looking more and more likely, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has laid out a plan for the canvasing operations. The recount of the governor’s race is set for Nov. 29, which will follow the Canvassing Board’s decision on whether a recount will happen. That board is scheduled to meet on Nov. 23. Leading up to those meetings, counties are prepping for the recount and dealing with an enormous number of data practices request from the campaigns. DFLer Mark Dayton leads Republican Tom Emmer by more than 8,700 votes.

Hennepin County conducted a post-election mandatory review and found that Dayton picked up three votes and Emmer lost 2 votes, for a net gain of 5 votes for Dayton. The process is part of a mandated review that all counties must undergo and is a hand count of random precincts. The county checked 13 precincts and 12,500 votes.

Ramsey County’s review showed there was no change from election night results.

St. Louis County, which has been the target of a lawsuit by the Emmer campaign and the Republican Party of Minnesota after the county said it would take at least 14 days to fill a request for voting machine tapes, summary statements, ballot security information, revisions to reported election night results, photocopies of all accepted and rejected absentee ballot information, names and addresses of everyone who applied for an absentee ballot, voter registration information, names of election judges, election night incident reports, and all information provided to the Dayton campaign. The county has announced that it is in negotiations to provide documents.

The duo also sued Pine County. Officials for the county told the Star Tribune on Tuesday they didn’t receive the data requests and only learned of the lawsuit in the local paper.

“I don’t think [the GOP and Emmer] handled it as well as they could have,” Pine County auditor Cathy Clemmer told Strib Eric Roper. “It would have been much simpler to pick up the phone and say, ‘Gee whiz, we haven’t heard from you. Did you get our e-mail?’ Instead of going directly to a lawsuit.”

While the statewide recount nears, three Minnesota House races are also at a razor thin margin. In District 15B, Republican St. Cloud State professor King Banaian has a 10-vote lead over DFLer Carol Lewis. In District 25B, Republican Kelby Woodard leads DFL Rep. David Bly by 31 votes and, in District 27A which contains Albert Lea, Republican Rich Murray leads Rep. Robin Brown by 57 votes. All three are within the 0.5 percent margin that triggers an automatic recount. Those recounts are scheduled for Nov. 29.

In an editorial on Tuesday, the Star Tribune questioned whether the 0.5 percent margin is too high a threshold to trigger a recount, noting that legislators had tried to scale it back to 0.25 percent.

“Had their bills become law, Gov.-elect Dayton likely would be announcing his top commissioner appointees this week,” the paper wrote. “Legislators of both parties would begin crafting legislation, knowing whose signature their bills would require in order to be enacted. And Minnesotans would at least be assured that their government was gearing up to tackle the biggest state fiscal crisis since the 1930s.”