elmer l. andersen

Deer-crossing signs are headed for extinction because deer are everywhere — a danger to drivers now so ubiquitous that in his State of the State address this year, Gov. Pawlenty put “trading real-life stories of how almost every one of us has hit a deer with our car” on his list of Minnesota’s “simple pleasures.” [...]

Unlike Norm Coleman, the Republican incumbent in Minnesota’s last great recount did not appeal to the state Supreme Court. Gov. Elmer L. Andersen faced, as Coleman has, a ruling by a specially empaneled court that his Democratic rival (Karl Rolvaag) had won more votes. But Andersen decided not to continue the legal battle. His full statement of [...]

Had state Sen. Kathy Sheran’s bill to reform absentee voting dodged Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto pen last year, it might have spared Minnesota at least some of the agony of the current statewide recount. Sheran has denied foreknowledge that the outcome of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race this year would hang on absentee ballots. Now she tells the Minnesota Independent that her reform effort also wasn’t inspired by a recount involving a contested absentee ballot in her first race 24 years ago. That story is told in government meeting minutes that are — amazingly — available online going back more than 50 years at the City of Mankato Web site. But proximity to the state’s most dramatic recounts seems to run in the family for Sheran, whose father was a longtime justice on the state Supreme Court.

Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn is calling for the resignation of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a man with whom he shared a ticket but apparently little else except antipathy. According to Quinn, the two men haven’t spoken since Aug. 2, 2007. That was the day after the I-35W bridge fell in Minneapolis, an event that did not trigger estrangement between Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau, who was then also Transportation Commissioner. But the distant relationship between Blagojevich and his second-in-command does have at least one parallel in Minnesota, from the time of the last great statewide election recount in 1962.

As wild as it seemed, the fluctuation of the tally last week in the Franken-Coleman U.S. Senate contest wasn’t your father’s vote roller coaster. Comparing hour-by-hour graphs from the early hours of two tight Minnesota election battles shows how in 1962 the gubernatorial election results toyed with an even tie, while 2008’s senatorial showdown was more a steady descent to a 200-vote gap.