All three incumbent members of the Anoka-Hennepin School Board were re-elected on Tuesday night amid controversy surrounding the school district’s controversial policy limiting discussions of LGBT issues in the district’s school.

Marci Anderson and Tom Heidemann, both of whom support the “neutrality policy” won, as did Scott Wenzel, who opposes the policy.

Heidemann won over challenger Darin Rorman, 70 percent to 27 percent. Anderson won with 40 percent of the vote, beating challengers Mary Nelson and Randy Kolb who both got 29 percent. Wenzel ran unopposed and got 95 percent of the vote.

The district’s policy limiting discussions of LGBT issues has become a national controversy after reports of bullying and several suicides among LGBT students. It has sparked protests at the district and at least six lawsuits against the school.

The Minnesota Family Council, which supports the policy and endorses only negative portrayals of LGBT people in public schools, implicitly endorsed Heidemann and Anderson on Tuesday.

The district has been battered by accusations that its “neutrality policy,” which restricts discussion about LGBT issues. The district is currently being sued by six former students and their families for this policy. Conservatives have long been active in the district, pushing to maintain the policy.

The policy, often dubbed the neutrality policy, is at the center of a nationwide discussion about suicide and anti-LGBT bullying and the subject of a lawsuit by six district students and their families.

The family council wrote that this is a “critical election” for the board.

“As you may know, the district has been targeted by national liberal organizations for its neutrality policy on sexual orientation. The neutrality policy states that school officials and teachers will remain neutral on issues involving sexual orientation. The school district believes these issues are better addressed by parents and families than by school officials. For taking this reasonable position, the school district is being sued by national liberal organizations.”

The MFC asked supporters to “vote their values” by supporting Tom Heidemann in District 1 and Marci Anderson in District 2.

At the bottom of the email was a short disclosure: “Prepared and paid for by Minnesota Family Council, in support of Tom Heidemann and Marci Anderson. This is issue advocacy and is not approved by the candidate nor is the candidate responsible for it.”

Tuesday’s election has been higher profile than in recent years due to the controversy over the neutrality policy. Three of the board’s six seats are up for election on Tuesday, and two of the seats–those of Heidemann and Anderson–are being contested.

Anderson’s opponents, Mary Nelson and Randy Kolb, oppose the neutrality policy. Heidemann’s opponent, Darin Rorman, hasn’t stated where he stands on the issue. Current school board member Scott Wenzal opposes the policy, but is running unopposed.

The Minnesota Family Council has been at the heart of the controversy surrounding LGBT issues in the district. In the past, its employees have played a part in forcing a transgender music teacher to quit, backed a policy that said “homosexuality not be taught/addressed as a normal, valid lifestyle and that the district staff and their resources not advocate the homosexual lifestyle” and worked to ban posters with suicide help-lines targeting LGBT students.

The Anoka-Hennepin School District drew national attention after a number of students, some of whom were gay, committed suicide.

The Minnesota Senate passed a sweeping voter identification bill Thursday that would require voters to present a government-issued photo ID card in order to vote in the state. Republicans said the measure is intended to prevent voter fraud, which they say has disenfranchised legitimate voters, while Democrats countered that it would be a travesty to democracy if even one voter was disenfranchised because they didn’t have an ID.

“Our freedom and democracy is at stake,” exhorted Sen. Julianne Ortman, R-Chanhassen, in urging members to vote for the bill.

Maple Grove Sen. Warren Limmer brought up a familiar refrain among Republicans: “You need to use a photo ID to make a bank transaction, to rent a movie, to buy a drink at a bar, and to get on an airplane. But heaven forbid we ask someone to show an ID to vote and maintain integrity in our election system. If any illegitimate voter votes, it disenfranchises a legitimate voter, and this is a cure for that.”

Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, said there’s a lot of misinformation floating around and pointed to the controversy surrounding President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

“This bill won’t stop the .0001 percent of voters who were felons in the last election. It doesn’t indicate felon status on a driver’s license,” he said. “It doesn’t stop non-citizens from voting. It doesn’t have your citizenship status on an ID.”

He criticized Republicans’ argument that only 144,000 Minnesotans don’t have photo identification.

“Our gubernatorial race was decided by 9,000 votes; 144,000 is insignificant?,” he said. “This is as bizarre as asking the President of the United States to produce a birth certificate after two years in office. This is bizarre.”

Sen. Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, said, “We just went through very intensive voter recounts in this state in 2008 and 2010. The whole country was watching. There were no cases of voter impersonation in those elections,” he said. “This bill is about putting roadblocks up to the ballot box.”

Sen. Linda Higgins, DFL-Minneapolis, said, “This voter ID bill is a bad bill. It’s disenfranchisement.”

She said the provision would keep low-income people, individuals living in battered women’s shelters and elderly citizens from voting.

“We should be proud of the system we have now,” she said. “If we pass a bill that prevents one person from voting we should be ashamed of ourselves.”

With that, the Senate voted along party lines to pass the bill. A companion bill has passed through three committees in the House and will have another committee hearing this week.

Following last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, Minnesota Democrats are proposing a constitutional amendment to define an individual as a “natural person.” The 2010 ruling gave corporations certain rights as “persons” and allowed them to engage in new levels of political activity. Sen. Scott Dibble of Minneapolis said the DFL bill is aimed at curtailing the idea that corporate entities have the same rights as human beings.

The bill, SF683/HF914, puts forward a simple question to voters: “Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to define ‘person’ to mean natural person?”

“Corporations have been allowed to funnel vast sums of money into elections which distorts our elections and really amounts to buying elections,” Dibble told the Minnesota Independent. “No other entity could begin to match the amount of money that corporations are capable of spending.”

Sen. Scott Dibble

He pointed to Justice Paul Stevens’ dissent in the Citizens United case that said allowing corporations to intervene in elections will corrupt self-governance.

“The Court’s opinion is… a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding,” wrote Stevens, “and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt.”

But, Dibble said, the bill isn’t only about elections. Further recognition of corporations as persons could give them rights that conflict with actual people in many areas of law, he said. For example, the Supreme Court is currently weighing a lawsuit filed by AT&T which is asserting that corporations have a right to personal privacy under the legal concept of corporate personhood.

“Corporations are an artificial construct,” Dibble said. “They shouldn’t be able to trump actual living human beings’ rights.”

The constitutional amendment being offered would hit the ballot in 2012 if it passes the legislature (amendment bills don’t go through the governor). Dibble said he and House author Rep. Bill Hilty of Finlayson will press for committee hearings. Dibble expressed some skepticism that the bill would pass, but added that some in the Tea Party have been sharply critical of the Citizens United decision. He wonders whether Tea Party-backed Republicans in the legislature find common cause with the DFL on corporate personhood.

Currently the bill is sponsored solely by DFLers.

In the Senate: Dibble along with Tony Lourey of Kerrick, John Marty of Roseville, Sandy Pappas of St. Paul and Tom Bakk of Cook.

In the House: Hilty along with Carlos Mariani of St. Paul, Karen Clark of Minneapolis, Andrew Falk of Murdock, Tim Mahoney of St. Paul, Linda Slocum of Richfield, Michael Nelson of Brooklyn Park, Alice Hausman of St. Paul, Tom Anzelc of Balsam Township, Tina Liebling of Rochester, Jean Wagenius of Minneapolis, Lyle Koenen of Clara City, Jeff Hayden of Minneapolis, Kathy Brynaert of Mankato, Phyllis Kahn of Minneapolis, Sheldon Johnson of St. Paul, Frank Hornstein of Minneapolis, Erin Murphy of St. Paul, John Persell of Bemidji, Rick Hansen of South St. Paul, and Carolyn Laine of Columbia Heights.

A bill requiring voter identification cards, electronic rosters and a slew of other changes to election laws was heard in the House Government Operations and Election committee Thursday. A large number of groups testified that the bill would disenfranchise voters, especially students, the elderly and the disabled, while several testified that the bill is needed to prevent voter fraud. A presentation by Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer on the technological improvements her bill would make to the voting process was derailed when the hearing room technology failed.

“You need a photo ID to buy alcohol, cigarettes, drive a car to the polling place,” said Rep. Mike Benson, a Republican from Rochester. Benson is the author of one of two bill introduced in the Minnesota House that would require photo identification for voting. Benson said his bill is intended to prevent voter fraud.

“It is very easy to impersonate someone if you don’t have to show identification,” he said. “More and more you hear questions about the real integrity of the system.”

Former Secretary of State and current Republican Rep. Kiffmeyer offered another more expansive photo identification bill that would include an electronic system that scans IDs at the polling place.

She said it was simple technology “that will help take some of the burden off of election workers.”

But, a technological glitch prevented a short video that Kiffmeyer has planned to show. “It’s something with the House technology here. We will save the video for Tuesday, Madame Chair,” Kiffmeyer said. The committee will be continuing testimony on the bill on Tuesday.

Fraud prevention?

Dan MacGrath, executive director of Minnesota Majority, a group that pushed for the Kiffmeyer bill and was led by Kiffmeyer several years ago, said that Minnesota’s election system is “concerning.”

“I hope that other states do not adopt our system,” he said.

He decried the state’s same-day registration because he says it requires less information than what’s needed to register prior to election day.

“It’s an injustice to grant preferential treatment and trust to some voters just because they decide to register at the last minute,” he said.

Dale Erickson of Blaine, who was a recount observer for the campaign of Sen. Norm Coleman, said, “It’s been in the last 10 or 15 years that the integrity of the system has been called into question.”

He said the bill would prevent non-citizens from voting. “Previous speakers have been talking about residency as if it were the same thing as citizenship. We have to know if you are eligible to vote because you are a citizen.”

Laura Norlander, an election judge who has Republican ties, said, “This was my first time to be an election judge in 2010. It was an eye opener to receive the training and realize how many opportunities for voter fraud in our system.”

But that voter fraud doesn’t seem to have materialized. Last fall, the Minnesota County Attorneys Association called allegations of voter fraud in Minnesota “frivolous” and that only 26 people had been convicted of voting as a felon in the last two years.

Teresa Nelson, legal counsel for the ACLU of Minnesota told the committee that two close elections, in 2008 and 2010, “have not led to a single conviction for voter impersonation fraud — the only type of voter fraud that photo ID requirements could possibly address.”

“Moreover,” she added, “there were only 26 felon voting convictions out of 2.9 million voters. Contrast that miniscule number with the thousands of voters who may be disenfranchised because of a new photo ID requirement.”

She said the bill would appear to violate the Constitution.

“Supporters of Jim Crow justified their voter suppresion laws as equal treatment of all voters,” she told the committee. “Vote no on this voter suppression bill.”

Too costly?

Mike Dean, executive director of Common Cause Minnesota, said that the bill would prevent people from voting.

“This does not make sense when we could have improved our system by implementing the registration modernization bill that Gov. Pawlenty vetoed last year,” he said.

He pointed out that Utah, a very Republican state, recently enacted a similar system to the one vetoed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty and did it with support of both Democrats and Republicans. Minnesota should follow the lead of Utah’s system, Dean said, instead of “wasting time playing partisan politics.”

Dean also said the bill would cost the state too much money at a time of a massive budget deficit.

The cost issue is one that other states are grappling with as Republicans move to implement the same system outside Minnesota as well. The Institute for Southern Studies released a report this week on a similar initiative in North Carolina and found that the state simply couldn’t afford it. The costs associated with a voter ID program would include a massive publicity campaign to ensure all citizens know about the new law, training programs for elected officials and the cost to the state to create voter ID cards for residents who cannot afford to pay for them.

All told, North Carolina would pay out $18 to $25 million over the next three years if the bill passed. The institute found costs associated with a similar plan in Missouri to be close to $20 million. “Lawmakers routinely failed to include at least one basic expense needed to implement a voter ID law in their cost estimates, such as voter education,” ISS reported.

Disenfranchised voters

Advocates for students, battered women, the elderly and the disabled told the committee that the bill would have significant impacts on those populations as well.

Mary Lou Hill, a 94-year old member of the League of Women Voters, was concerned about the effect of the bill on seniors. She said she was born four years before the 19th amendment gave women the right to vote.

“I believe the right to vote is among our most important rights,” she said. “Whatever the authors’ intentions, the effect of the bills would be to take the vote away from United States citizens.”

She said the bill’s requirement that all voters obtain a photo ID from the Department of Public Safety would be an obstacle to older voters.

“It is easy for one of you to run down to the government center and to update your drivers license. Senior citizens may have a number of problems with this simple activity. They might not drive and might not have anyone to take them.”

“There’s no question these bills will disenfranchise thousands of senior citizens.”

Dierdre Keyes, of the Battered Women’s Legal Advocacy Project, said the bill, which would do away with Minnesota’s vouching system, would have a profound impact on women who have been victims of domestic violence.

“Women who stay at our shelters are required to make no contact with their former residence and it is not likely that they will want to be anywhere near their old polling place for fear of being seen,” she said. “These women are able to vote because of the vouching system. The staff of the shelter goes with the women to the shelter’s precinct and vouches for them as a resident of the shelter.”

She added, “They are interested in voting, yet on election day they were residents of the battered women’s shelter with ID’s stating the address of the of the residence they just fled. With the current vouching system in place we are able to assist them to vote and be safe.”

If the bill becomes law, “these women would choose safety over voting and their voice would not be heard at the polling place,” she said.

Several students recounted their experiences voting and how the law change might affect them.

Matt Butler, co-chair of the Macalester College chapter of MPIRG, said the bill would put a “burden on college students’ ability to vote,” and Peter Randall, a University of Minnesota student and also a member of MPIRG, said that he’s changed his residency five times in the last three years.

“There’s no need for more barriers to Minnesota’s nation leading youth vote turnout,” Randall said.

St. Paul City Councilmember Melvin Carter represented the City Council and Mayor Chris Coleman at the hearing and recounted how he was turned away from the polls in Florida during the 2000 election.

“I’m here today because I am confused by these efforts. We heard testimony today that you need a photo ID to buy alcohol or take the ACT or write a check at CVS as though those things are anywhere in comparison to the fundamental right to vote,” he said. “We should always agree that every eligible American should be welcomed at the polls.”

Justin Page, an attorney with the Minnesota Disability Law Center, said the bill would create unnecessary barriers for people with disabilities.

“An individual is entitled to have personal assistance by someone of his or her own choosing,” he said, regarding a provision in the bill that bans health care workers from assisting disabled voters. “That is what federal law requires.”

He said he has been assured by the bill’s authors that the language is going to be changed.

The bill would also prohibit people under guardianship from voting, he said. “It’s hard for me to believe that you can talk about the civic duty to vote while at the same time disenfranchising a whole group of people.”

An extension of the hearing will be held on Tuesday.

Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer of Big Lake and Sen. Warren Limmer of Maple Grove unveiled the Republican plan to overhaul the state’s voting system at a press conference on Wednesday. Among the proposed changes are the elimination of vouching, implementation of a photo identification system, a ban on health care workers assisting voters in the booth, and massive changes to the recount process. Most of the changes reflect complaints by the conservative group Minnesota Majority, which Kiffmeyer ran several years ago.

Kiffmeyer said that the new system unveiled today has stood up to court challenges.

“This is a concept, modeled on the Indiana voting system which has been ruled constitutional by the Indiana Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court,” she said. “This is a system that I think is good for Minnesotans.”

Limmer added that they are proposing the changes because Minnesotans increasingly don’t trust the voting system. “I am excited about being a part of this major revision of Minnesota election law,” he said. “We hear from citizens who are growing suspicious of our election process.”

Among the changes proposed in the bill include the requirement of photo identification for voters. Under the bill, an electronic registration system would be set up that would scan IDs at the polling place. Voters would then be required to sign a receipt that would be printed off.

“This is a receipt that has value and meaning,” Kiffmeyer said. “I think the court case that was in the news in regards to voter receipts… This addresses that concern that was well in the news and well talked about.”

Kiffmeyer was referring to a petition filed by the Republican Party to the Minnesota Supreme Court in the Minnesota gubernatorial recount which tried to force counties to count names on the voter roster instead of voter receipts. The court rejected the GOP case.

Kiffmeyer said that the costs of setting up an electronic voting system haven’t been determined yet, but that the the state of Minnesota would pick up the tab.

Low-income individuals could get the IDs for free at any Department of Public Safety office. When asked about people who are physically unable to get to a DPS office to get an ID, Kiffmeyer didn’t have an easy answer. “Those folks are in a very unique special circumstance,” she said adding that there are some details to work out. “We will be meeting with folks,” she said.

Should the measure pass, vouching would become a thing of the past in Minnesota, and same-day registration would require the same photo ID requirements as a registered voter.

The bill also spells out new ballot handling requirements.

Limmer said the bill was intended to fix the alleged problem of ballots discovered in the trunks of cars.

“When we, a few short years ago, were trying to validate the Franken-Coleman election, we find a box of ballots in the trunk of someone’s car,” he said. “That has not been corrected since that time. This would correct that.”

A reporter noted, however, that the incident never happened.

Limmer brushed that fact off and added, “There’s a history of discrepancies in balloting in certain precincts. It seems like it’s a constant that is highlighted by close elections.”

Other provisions in the bill would change Minnesota election law. If passed, the bill would prohibit voting assistance by “the voter’s court-appointed guardian or conservator” or “any paid individual providing health care or health-related personal assistance to the voter.”

That law change has been sought by Minnesota Majority, a group that has been touting an unsubstantiated claim that a health care worker in Crow Wing County voted for people with developmental disabilities and that people who did not have the mental capacity to vote cast ballots in the last election. An investigation found no evidence that those claims were true.

Another subtle change appears to be geared toward Minnesota Majority. The ban on wearing political attire in polling plaes would only be banned “if it is designed to influence voting for or against a particular candidate, political party, or question on the ballot at the election.”

The previous law was more broad and prevented Minnesota Majority’s “Please ID Me” buttons and Tea Party regalia from being worn in the polling place.

Kiffmeyer was the executive director of Minnesota Majority as recently as 2008, and she was Secretary of State prior to DFLer Mark Ritchie.

In a statement on Wednesday, Ritchie criticized the bill.

“This omnibus bill contains a wide range of expansive and expensive election law changes,” he said. “Careful research and analysis of this bill will certainly be necessary to determine the exact cost and impact on local and state governments.”

He said that implementing an electronic voting system in Minnesota could cost as much as $20 million.

“The bill’s implications will also be analyzed by groups who would be affected including absentee and military voters, seniors, and voters with disabilities,” he said. “At a time when lawmakers are looking to streamline government and create efficiencies, HF 210 includes many proposals that would significantly increase the state’s budget deficit and create higher on-going costs for cities, counties and townships.”

The DFL offered its own press conference on Wednesday.

“This proposal is a risk that we cannot afford,” said Rep. Steve Simon of Hopkins. “There’s a very real prospect that tens of thousands of law-abiding Minnesotans will be fenced out of the voting process.”

He said that voter fraud in Minnesota is very low, and in the last election 100 percent of the convictions were for felons voting illegally.

“How will voter ID at the polls impact felons from voting when felons already have ID cards?” he asked.

Rep. Ryan Winkler of Golden Valley agreed. “This bill does nothing to address felon voting.”

“The real reason the Republicans are pushing a photo ID bill is because they think that’s the best and most effective way to block voters from the polls that they think are going to vote for Democrats,” he said. “This is a partisan ploy.”

At his home in Delano this morning, Republican Tom Emmer is expected to concede the governor’s race. An unfavorable Minnesota Supreme Court opinion released Tuesday as well as a new poll showing a vast majority of voters want him to concede preceded the announcement.But more insurmountable for Emmer is the math: The State Canvassing Board will meet Wednesday morning to go over challenged ballots, but that number has shrunk to 181, far short of the approximately 9,000 Emmer would need to overcome Mark Dayton and win the governor’s mansion.

According to the Associated Press, Emmer will concede the governor’s race at 10:30 am Wednesday from his home in Delano.

Before Thanksgiving the Emmer team argued that all of Minnesota’s 87 counties must reconcile their ballot counts with precinct rosters rather than the standard set since 1982 of counting ballot receipts.

The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected that argument in late-November and released their opinion on the matter on Tuesday, shutting down an important legal angle for Emmer.

The justices wrote:

Because Minn. Stat. §§ 204C.20, subd. 1, and 206.86, subd. 1 (2008), use obsolete language that does not include the terms “polling place roster” or “voter’s receipts,” they do not unambiguously require local election officials to determine the number of ballots to be counted based only on the number of signatures on the polling place roster or prohibit reliance on the number of voter’s receipts.
Construing the legislative intent of the ambiguous language in Minn. Stat. §§ 204C.20, subd. 1, and 206.86, subd. 1, based on the purpose to be achieved by the statutes, the language of current and former statutes on the subject, and the longstanding administrative interpretation of the statutes, it is clear that the Legislature intended to permit reliance on either signatures on polling place rosters or voter’s receipts to determine the number of ballots to be counted.

The opposition took the court opinion as a clarion call for Emmer to concede. “It’s time to read the tea leaves: the party’s over,” said DFL Rep. Ryan Winkler of Golden Valley. “Today’s Supreme Court ruling leaves only 181 contested ballots in front of the state canvassing board, and an impossible 8,500 vote gap between Tom Emmer and the Governor’s Office.”

Winkler’s argument was boosted by a Public Policy Polling survey released on Tuesday that found a majority of Minnesotans agreeing Emmer should concede. Only 22 percent said he should continue the fight, with 68 percent saying it’s time for a concession speech.

Also on Tuesday, Emmer withdrew more ballot challenges; the count now stands at 90 challenges by Emmer and 91 challenges by Dayton. About 30 of Emmer’s challenges are considered frivolous after the campaign dropped more than 2,000 others over the last four days.

As Emmer considers his concession on Wednesday morning, the margin in the race is around 9,000 votes.

On the third day of the Minnesota gubernatorial recount, DFLer Mark Dayton’s campaign said it may have eclipsed the 9,000 vote mark in his lead over Republican Tom Emmer. Also on Wednesday, Emmer’s team increased the number of frivolous ballot challenges to 2,141, far exceeding Dayton’s 39, according to numbers released by the Dayton campaign. The vast majority of frivolous challenges came in Hennepin County, where elections manager Rachel Smith asked to make changes to a counting process slowed by the volume of Emmer’s challenges. The Minnesota GOP attacked her for what they said was siding with Dayton.

Emmer’s frivolous challenges caused Hennepin County Elections Manager Rachel Smith to consider adding more hours to the daily recount time and to add more tables to the 25 already dedicated to the recount. She said she reconsidered when the GOP threatened to take her to court.

“We basically were told if we tried to add more tables we’d be taken into court,” Smith told the Pioneer Press.

GOP chair Tony Sutton went on the attack.

“After overseeing an unprecedented 400,000 vote error on election night, Hennepin County Elections Manager Rachel Smith today tried to change the rules in the middle of game to advance the interests of Mark Dayton,” Sutton said in a statement. “Smith has repeatedly inserted herself into the action by siding with the Dayton campaign on a host of issues, including her attempt today to arbitrarily change the recount schedule. Instead of expediting the recount, Smith’s machinations have only served to slow things down. As the advocates for Tom Emmer’s interests in this process, we will not be intimidated by Smith.”

Smith defended her actions in an interview with MinnPost.

“I don’t work for either party, I work for the citizens of Hennepin County,” she said. “I am trying to do the best job I can to get through a half-million ballots in the allotted time, and do it as fairly and expeditiously as I can.”

The recount is already 84 percent complete, according to the Secretary of State. The Dayton campaign says it may have a vote margin of more than 9,000 for the first time and released numbers showing a 8,998 lead. With a large number of challenges still in the system, that number could change.

However, the number of legitimately challenged ballots is much smaller than Dayton’s lead — just over 700 so far.

The second day of the Minnesota gubernatorial recount focused on two counties, Hennepin and Ramsey, where the bulk of ballots remaining to be counted exist. Hennepin County officials told reporters Tuesday that the campaign of Republican Tom Emmer was engaged in numerous frivolous challenges to ballots. Meanwhile, party chair Tony Sutton told the Associated Press that the Republican Party may press for a court challenge once the recount has concluded.

According to Hennepin County Elections Manager Rachel Smith, the Emmer team has challenged 927 ballots since the recount began in that county on Monday; of those, 894 were frivolous challenges. The team of DFLer Mark Dayton has made 13 challenges deemed frivolous.

“We are increasingly getting concerned about the time it is taking to process those challenges,” said Smith. “In one precinct we had over 100 frivolous challenges.”

She told reporters that her staff had overheard the Emmer team telling their challengers that they need to increase their challenges.

“We are trying work with the Emmer campaign to reduce the number of challenges,” said Smith, noting that the Emmer campaign has so far refused to withdraw any of his challenges deemed frivolous.

“It seems a bit unnecessary to be labeling all these ballots, and we would like explanation for why they are being challenged,” she said.

But despite the additional time needed to process a large number of challenges by the Emmer team, Smith said the process has “certainly been very respectful, and we will continue to work with both the Emmer and Dayton campaigns.”

Ken Martin, spokesman for the Dayton team said, “Things are going smoothly.” He said Dayton has gained a net of 205 votes so far, expanding his lead to 8,975.

He did, however, criticize Emmer’s frivolous ballot challenges, which total 1,228 to Dayton’s 33.

“It seems to me a lot of these challenges so far are beyond just frivolous,” he said. “Our concern is that we are wasting time.”

He continued, “If there’s a legitimate challenge, each side has the right to do that, and some of the frivolous challenges yesterday were absurd and they unfortunately are wasting people’s time.”

The situation in Hennepin County contrasted with that of Ramsey County, where Elections Manager Joe Mansky said the process has run smoothly and the number of challenges has been low.

He said there was “nothing that would be out of ordinary or alarming in any sense. I think the attorneys for the two sides have been very respectful.”

Ramsey County has decided to sent all challenges, frivolous or not, to the state canvassing board.

The county has recounted close to 80,000 ballots over the last two days and is on track to finish by Friday’s deadline, said Mansky.

But while the recount continues, GOP chair Tony Sutton told the Associated Press that a court challenge following the recount may be in the works. Such an action could possibly delay the seating of a governor past the start of the new legislative session.

“There’s definitely some issues that merit review,” he said, including reconciliation of ballot counts in precincts, an issue that the party brought to the Minnesota Supreme Court and which the court quickly rejected. Sutton also said that isaues with vouching could be part of a lawsuit.

He said that Emmer, not the party, would have the final say.

“I go in peace of mind and heart but with sadness,” Rep. James Oberstar told reporters at a press conference in Duluth Wednesday as he tried to hold back tears. “I loved the opportunity to serve the people of this district.” Oberstar, the longest serving member of Congress in Minnesota’s history, was defeated by Republican Chip Cravaack by a margin of fewer than 2 percent.

“It’s been an extraordinary honor and privilege to serve the disparate interests and the regions of this congressional district and to the wonderful people, those that support you and those with dignity and respect, take an opposing view,” he said, “after each of those 18 elections I’ve said, ‘Thank you.’ I say ‘thank you’ again today.”

Polling showed a tight race between Oberstar and Cravaack especially the weekend before the election, when a KSTP/SurveyUSA poll showed Oberstar up by a single point.

Just a day before the election, the Cook Political Report rated the race a tossup.

Oberstar’s typical margin of victory in past elections has been above 30 percent.

Cravaack picked up endorsements by local and national anti-abortion groups, a move dubbed partisan by Oberstar’s campaign, which defended his anti-abortion position.

Oberstar was targeted by anti-abortion and Republican groups with independent expenditures reaching $82,000. Some of the ads these groups ran contained information that was questionable, including the claim that health care reform — which Oberstar voted for — will fund abortion.

But Oberstar told reporters it was likely turnout that tipped the election in Cravaack’s favor.

“There’s no one factor. We’ll have to look more closely at the voter turnout,” he said. “In St. Louis County, turnout was down by 20,000 votes. I think with those votes, the outcome likely would have been different.”

He noted that everybody on his campaign “worked themselves to the fringe.”

Ultimately, he blamed himself for the loss. “In this arena you look into the mirror and say, ‘It was me,’ but there is nothing I would take back, and I can’t change and wouldn’t change any of the votes I cast this year.”

Oberstar recounted the successful projects he’d brought to the district and said he was proud that many will stand even after his successor is gone.

“I had to stand up for the right things, and I knew that in the health care vote lay the seeds of widespread dissension,” he said noting that he’s run on the platform of “Health Care for All” since 1974. “This was our opportunity.”

On his future, Oberstar said he will “reflect for a while and then look for something in the public sector.”