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.” Pawlenty was taking poetic license: Deer crashes are down, though (human) fatalities are up.

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

EVELETH: Iron Range panel rejoices over unallotment reprieve. Pawlenty’s cuts spared the Iron Range Resources Board, which includes several DFLers said to be vying for his office. [Mesabi Daily News]

MANKATO: Big day for welfare-seeking. Officials believe the 28 applications for aid they received on June 2 set a single-day record for Blue Earth County; layoffs and migrants don’t explain away the trend of increasing need. [Mankato Free Press]

BENSON: Private prison chafes at tax valuation. Swift County and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) are $20 million apart on the value of CCA’s for-profit Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton and are likely headed for court. [West Central Tribune]

WINONA: Seminary’s ordinations illegitimate, Vatican says. Thirteen will be ordained today at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, part of an ultraconservative order that’s on the outs with Rome — although Pope Benedict lifted a ban on its bishops, including a Holocaust-denier who taught in Winona for 15 years. [Associated Press]

ELK RIVER: Bank robber tried two-wheeled getaway, police say. His face was wrapped in bandages because he’d been in a car crash, the robber told bank staff; cops nabbed a man on a bike not far away. [St. Cloud Times]

MINNEAPOLIS: Elmer L. Andersen had short term, long shadow. The late Republican who declined to drag out the 1962 recount for governor after serving only two years in the office nonetheless had a great influence on Minnesota and is the subject of a 100th-birthday celebration and exhibit. [Burnsville This Week]

Elmer L. Andersen (ca. 1965), by Edward Vincent Brewer. MHS

Gov. Elmer L. Andersen’s full statement of Saturday, March 23, 1963, as printed in the Minneapolis Tribune the following day:

After the most careful consideration I have decided not to appeal the ruling of the district judge panel. There is no justification for appeal simply because the Supreme Court has already made its position clear on certain categories of irregular ballots and there is no way to judge the remainder so as to reverse the result of the lower court. 

This is the  anlysis of my counsel, Messers. Kyle and Morton, and Recount Director Tom Swain, all of whom have done a perfectly magnificent job in my behalf. 

To the very many people who have urged me in the most strenuous terms to appeal to the Supreme Court, I may say with equal emphasis, that were there the slightest basis for expecting a reveral of judgment, I most certainly [would] appeal. 

On the other hand, when a competent and fair tribunal, which the district judge panel most certainly has been, renders a judgment that skilled representatives of mine feel cannot be successfully challenged in a higher court, then no one could expect me to appeal in order to gain time or keep possession of this office until the last possible moment. 

When the canvassing board declared me the winner and the contest started, my supervisors and I were confident the final result would be victory for me by an increased margin. 

I decided to carry on all the duties and responsibilities of governor as best I could, under the circumstances, and this I have done. 

As a result, legislative and administrative programs have moved ahead in a positive way. 

To those who wonder why the recount changed the original result, I would point out that there is about the same percentage of irregular ballots among Republican voters as DFL. I had 15,000 more paper ballot votes than my opponent, thus the opposition had 15,000 more chances to find irregular ballots than our people did. I am confident my recounters found every vote there was to be found. 

Actually no one can know for sure who had the most voters’ support last Nov. 6th as more tha 1,300 ballots were thrown out, and the established margin of victory is only 91. 

To those who suggest that this then could only be resolved by a run-off election, the answer is that there is no provision in our constitution or statutory law for such a solution. This is a matter for legislative consideration to apply to future elections. 

To those who wonder why it has taken so long to decide this election, may I say it is only because it is so close. Out of this experience every citizen can gain a heightened appreciation of each vote and awareness for the need of casting it properly, and suggestions for improving election lawss and procedures. 

I will not attempt at this time to reveiw and assess all the accomplishements of my administration, but I know there has been solid achievement in the fields of human rights, goverment services, jobs and economic growth (particularly for northeastern Minnesota), traffic safety, improvement in the state’s finances, natural resource development and future planning. 

It is particularly gratifying to have won for the people a right to vote on a taconite amendment for which I fought so long, and at times, almost alone. 

To me it has been a fruitful and rewarding two and one quarter years. I am thankful to state employees, department heads, legislators, study group members and all others who have contributed time, thought and energy to provide such substantial gain in so many areas, in so short a time. 

May I say a special word of thanks to all members of the news media, with whom I have always enjoyed working, for their diligence in presenting news of Minnesota state government. 

Monday I will file a waiver of waiting period with the Ramsey County District Court which will permit a certificate of election to be issued to Mr. Rolvaag. 

My staff will be here Monday morning until Mr. Rolvaag has qualified and his people arrive. I have written Mr. Rolvaag my beset wishes and placed my executive secretary, Mr. Milton Knoll, in communication with Mr. William Shovell, so there can be an orderly transition. 

As to my own future plans, I will be consulting with my loyal and devoted staff on their relocation. It will not be my plan to return to the active management of H.B. Fuller Co., although I will return to my office there and assume a position to be determined. My main activity will continue to be in the field of community and public  service as it has been for some years. 

I would particularly like to puruse the long-range New Dimension Natural Resource program which we have launched. 

Today ends one chapter, admittedly a shorter chapter than I had intended, but there are more to be written. I am disappointed but not the least discouraged: I am defeated but not the least disheartened. I am deeply grateful to the people of Minnesota for the privilege that has been mine to serve as governor of this great state which means so much to me, and to the thousands of unselfish workers for better government who have given me their support. 

Our son, Tony, and his wife, Alice, are home from New York for this weekend, as is my college son, Julian. With Emily and my wife, Eleanor, who has given so much to me, our family is united. 

Our love has deepened and broadened through this experience. We are thankful we have retained good health, and we continue to be humbly grateful for the rich blessings of God that we have so abundantly received.

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 some of the agony of the current statewide recount. Sheran denied foreknowledge that this year’s Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race would hang on absentee ballots. Now she tells the Minnesota Independent her reform effort also wasn’t inspired by a recount that involved 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, a longtime chief justice on the state Supreme Court, joined the high court in the midst of Minnesota’s last major statewide recount.

Sheran’s 2007 bill was the latest in a long line of legislation proposed since 1994 but never signed into law that would make it easier for Minnesotans to cast a valid absentee ballot. Under her bill, voters wouldn’t have to give a specific reason for voting absentee, such as being unable to make it to the polling place on Election Day. Regular absentee voters could have signed up to automatically receive absentee ballots, rather than applications for ballots, before each election. Voters who can’t get to their polling places because of illness or disability, or who live in nursing homes, could have an absentee ballot sent to and cast by an agent they designate. And Minnesotans who are out of state wouldn’t have to have their ballots witnessed by a registered Minnesota voter or a notary public, unless it’s their first time voting absentee.

(That last measure wouldn’t have been enough to help one Minnesota voter in New York who told MnIndy her initial absentee ballot this fall was rejected for improper witnessing – a problem she was able to remedy only by last minute heroics.)

Anyone with Internet access can trace Sheran’s concern for the plight of absentee voters back to her first election nearly a quarter century ago. A special meeting of the Mankato City Council on Sept. 18, 1984, in its capacity as the local canvassing board, heard Sheran make the case for tallying an absentee voter’s challenged ballot in a primary election for an at-large seat on the council:

Kathleen Sheran, 117 West Glencrest, appeared before the Council stating that the outcome of the election would not be changed overall by the one challenged ballot. She explained that the opportunity of the person to vote is significant, and determining the validity of the ballot in question was an important decision. She stated that she appreciated the way the challenged ballot was presented. Ms. Sheran further stated that the Council must determine the voters intent. She questioned whether the scribbling on the ballot would identify the ballot, and should this take away that person’s right to vote. She stated that it might be easier to say that one vote would not make a difference to the outcome of the election.

The ballot was counted and though it didn’t tip the election, it allowed Sheran to increase her lead over the third-place finisher by five instead of only four votes:

Mr. Smith moved to accept the challenged absentee ballot as a vote for Kathleen Sheran for the office of Councilmember At-Large. Mrs. Lofy seconded the motion. Mr. Hagemann, Mrs. Lofy, Mr. Smith and Mayor Mocol voted aye. Mr. Christ and Mrs. Brown voted nay. The motion carried. Mr. Hagemann then moved to approve the results of the re-count of the Primary Election for the office of Councilperson At-Large, with 1,390 votes for Francis X. Brady, 1,513 votes for Paul V. Meyer, and 1,395 votes for Kathleen Sheran. Mrs. Brown seconded the motion, all voting aye, the motion carried.

Sheran went on to take first place — and her first elective office — in the general election that year, as she explained in a recent e-mail to MnIndy:

The first time I ran for election to the Mankato at large seat there were three candidates…so in the primary I came in second….in the general election I came in first…and served 16 years… The vote was so close that there was a recount…for the primary that is…I won by a significant amount in the general election. I can’t remember the numbers for the final outcome that year. It is interesting you ask if my interest dated back to this experience.  The answer is no…this did not enter my mind at any point during the introduction of the absentee ballot bill. The bill I introduced served to increase access to persons who might not otherwise be able to vote, and provided an option of getting some assistance to recieve a ballot, while limiting the number of persons one person can assist. I enjoyed looking back at the minutes you found….LONG time ago and would not have remembered this appearance unless you had shown me these minutes…actually..still don’t recall the appearance… I do remember the recount!

Proximity to dramatic Minnesota recounts seems to run in Kathy Sheran’s family. She’s following in the footsteps of her father, Robert. J. Sheran, who after wartime service as an agent in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, was elected to two terms (1947-50) as Mankato’s state senator.

Robert Sheran

Ten years later, the elder Sheran, a DFLer, joined the state Supreme Court, taking his place on the bench Jan. 8, 1963 — just as Minnesota’s last great statewide recount in the governor’s race was getting underway. He narrowly missed a direct role in that recount: A series of preliminary decisions that favored the Republican incumbent soon after the election led to an agreement by both sides to forego the Supreme Court for a separate, three-judge panel that would oversee the recount. Sheran might have recused himself anyway, since that recount involved Republican Elmer L. Anderson — the man who had just appointed Sheran to the high court.

Later Robert Sheran was elevated to chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, where he served for eight years, 1973-81. During that time current Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, who’s also a member of the State Canvassing Board that will certify Franken or Coleman as winner of the Senate recount, learned the judicial ropes as a clerk in Sheran’s office.

None of which answers the question: Why the heck does the City of Mankato Web site have city council meeting minutes from 1984 (let alone 1957!) online? According to City Manager Patrick Hentges, city staff realized five or six years ago that a resource they’d found useful — records of city council meetings going back to the Eisenhower era — might be enjoyed by Mankato citizens (and the Whole World Wide Web, by extension).

It’s advantageous for all involved in city matters to review the record on recurring topics. “A lot of these issues go back … We dealt with them before, in 19-whatever,” Hentges says. He adds that having council meeting minutes — and soon, video excerpts — available online makes up for the inevitable loss of institutional knowledge as council members and city staff come and go over the years.

Ironically, Kathy Sheran’s freshman year, 1985, is one of only four years since 1957 that are missing from Mankato’s online archive of city council meeting minutes. Hentges said city staffers aren’t sure what happened to the records from those years.

Clockwise from upper left: Quinn, Blagojevich, Andersen, Rolvaag (MHS)

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). Despite making overtures and even having once defended his embattled boss’s integrity, Quinn says he hasn’t spoken to Blagojevich since Aug. 2, 2007.

That’s a contrast with Minnesota, where Gov. Tim Pawlenty stood by Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau and pleaded her case until the state Senate canned her from her moonlighting stint as state transportation commissioner in the wake of the I-35W bridge collapse — which by coincidence occurred the day before Quinn’s last talk with Blagojevich.

So things are different in Illinois and Minnesota, at least in that respect. 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.

The rivals in the race for governor that year were the sitting governor, Republican Elmer L. Andersen, and the sitting lieutenant governor, DFLer Karl Rolvaag. (Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor in those days did not run together on a ticket, so the office-holders weren’t necessarily of the same party.) After each won election to two-year terms in 1960, their 1962 clash was inevitable, according to the 1964 book “Recount” by Ronald F. Stinnett and Charles H. Backstrom.

Rolvaag, who had already served three terms as lieutenant governor, and Andersen, a 10-year state Senate veteran, “had personalities and philosophies so different that they could only resolve into opposition for the governorship in 1962,” Stinnett and Backstrom wrote, adding:

Karl Rolvaag stated several times just prior to his ascension from the “broom closet” to the plush parlors of the Governor’s suite that he had been in the Governor’s office only twice during Andersen’s term.

(The “broom closet” was a small office to which Rolvaag decamped toward the end of the 139-day recount, to make way for A.M. “Sandy” Keith, a fellow DFLer whose separate election in 1962 to the office of lieutenant governor was undisputed.)

By the end of the recount, which gave Rolvaag a 91-vote victory over Andersen, the two men exhibited a civility toward one another not seen between Blagojevich and Quinn — or between current recount rivals Al Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman for that matter. Still, during the two years they spent working — in theory — together, the relationship was an arm’s-length one on par with the current occupants of Illinois’ Statehouse.

Andersen left Rolvaag alone to do the one duty of a lieutenant governor: oversee the state Senate, which then met only 90 days per year. He might have more profitably given Rolvaag something else to do, even running the state transportation department. Instead Rolvaag enjoyed plenty of spare time in which to plot his campaign to topple Andersen.

The Rolvaag-Andersen contest is one such rivalry that NPR’s Political Junkie blog cites in a useful overview of the governor-lieutenant governor relationship in America, inspired by Quinn’s comments Thursday. Today in 18 states, voters elect candidates to those offices separately. Among the other states, Illinois is one of seven in which candidates are nominated individually (running separately in party primaries in Illinois), only to unite on a single ticket for the general election.

That allows plenty of opportunity for potentially distant shotgun marriages around the country, though few reach the caustic depths of one calling for the other’s ouster as in Illinois today – or the razor’s-edge rivalry of Minnesota in 1962.

The first graph comes from the 1964 book Recount, by Ronald F. Stinnett and Charles H. Backstrom, an authoritative account of the legendarily close election two years earlier for governor of Minnesota. That contest ended — after 139 days of counting and recounting — with a 91-vote margin of victory for Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party challenger Karl Rolvaag over the Republican incumbent Elmer L. Andersen. But it started with an electoral see-saw of first thousands and then dozens of votes that saw the lead change six times in four days.

The graph is a snapshot of a little more than a day of that upheaval, from 9 p.m. election night until midnight the next day. Two lines show the size of the gap favoring first Rolvaag and then Andersen, as tracked by the rival news services United Press and The Associated Press, who were competing for the latest counts from counties across the state. At first, the lines rise sharply into territory indicating a Rolvaag plurality, then dive steeply down as press tallies indicated an Andersen lead, the first of a pattern of plurality shifts that continued for days after the time period depicted in the graph.

The second graph shows a different 28 hours in last week’s counting, based on tabulations courtesy of the St. Paul Pioneer Press’s Political Animal Twitter feed, from nearly 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 6, to past 8 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 7. Over that time, the vote margin favoring U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman dropped from 590 to 221 votes, with a few sudden jolts but no swings in the lead.

How the gap in the Minnesota gubernatorial vote count changed over 27 hours, Nov. 6–7, 1962, in thousands of votes. Lead for Rolvaag in the upper half of the graph, lead for Andersen in the lower half.

How the lead for U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman changed in the Minnesota senatorial vote count over 28 hours, Nov. 6–7, 2008, in hundreds of votes.