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.

By constitutional mandate, redistricting takes place every 10 years: Each state’s legislature must redraw the lines that define congressional and legislative districts. But it rarely happens the same way twice; when politicians fail, judges step in to finish the job.

Stakes are especially high in Minnesota, as the state may lose a congressional seat after the 2010 U.S. Census reapportionment. And if Minnesota loses a congressional seat, the redistricting process will decide whether the district of Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann or another incumbent will be relegated to the history books.

The bill, carried by Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller (DFL-Minneapolis), takes up recommendations from a group led by former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Gov. Arne Carlson.

The Mondale-Carlson group (technically, the Advisory Board for the Minnesota Redistricting Project of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota) proposed saving time and sweat by getting judges to draw congressional- and legislative-district lines before legislators themselves get involved. The reverse sequence — Legislature, then courts — is responsible for the state’s current political lines.

But some who were among the closest to the work of reshaping Minnesota’s political boundaries last time around seem to think the existing system worked pretty well.

Redistricting reform got nowhere last session, but this year Pogemiller pushed through his bill by a vote of 39–28 in the final days before the state Legislature adjourned. Next stop: the House’s Committee on State and Local Government Operations Reform, Technology and Elections, which could hold discussions on the topic before considering the bill itself when the legislative session resumes in February, according to legislative staff.

UPDATE: In an email, Committee Chair state Rep. Gene Pelowski promises that the committee “will be looking at redistricting over the summer and this bill will be included.”

Reform advocates, led by Mondale and Carlson, have argued (pdf) that the current system is “broken” — badly enough that it won’t do for the next round of redistricting after the 2010 census.

The new system would create a commission of five retired appeals court judges to make the first maps of new district boundaries based on the latest census data. The majority and minority caucuses from both the House and the Senate would appoint one judge each. The four judges would together choose a fifth to join them.

Their first plan would go to the Legislature for an up-or-down vote — no changes allowed. If that fails to pass, the commission would work up a second plan, which again would be subject to an up-or-down vote by the Legislature. Only if the second plan fails to pass would legislators have a chance at concocting their own plan.

Musical chairs

Demographic estimates predict the count in Minnesota may fall about 2,000 people short of the number needed to retain the state’s current complement of eight congressional districts. If that happens, the question of which party’s incumbent loses a seat in Congress will fall to the state’s redistricting process — and will likely make the decennially debilitating battles over creating new legislative boundaries look like cake walks.

So the rules for what could become a titanic game of musical chairs matter deeply. And exactly who applies those rules depends on who wins the race for governor next year. If Democrats retain control of the state Legislature but lack veto-proof majorities in both houses, then a Republican in the governor’s mansion keeps things complicated, as both the state’s legislative and executive branches must approve a new plan.

On the other hand, if a Democrat succeeds Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the struggle for the DFL becomes one of drawing the most advantageous plan possible under constitutional requirements.

The last time the state took on this task, after the 2000 census, it was not simply a matter for one party, or even two. For the first time, redistricting was a three-way partisan game: The Independence Party’s Jesse Ventura was governor, Republicans held the House, and the DFL controlled the Senate.

Each assigned a staffer to draw a redistricting plan. (Wielding somewhat less influence were the minority caucuses from each legislative body, whose redistricting staffers included one Michael Brodkorb for the Senate Republicans.)

Veterans of the trenches

Over the past few weeks, the Minnesota Independent interviewed key staffers from each party as well as the man who ran redistricting for the state Legislature: Peter Wattson, now secretary of the Senate.

All had a hand in drawing — or, in Wattson’s case, evaluating — maps that eventually got redrawn by the courts. But all seem satisfied by the result.

Wattson said the redistricting process last time was “pretty orderly, actually.”

Greg Peppin, who drew redistricting maps for the Republican House majority, recalls that “everyone felt that the plan was pretty fair.”

Vic Thorstenson, Peppin’s counterpart for Senate Democrats, said: “We were pretty happy with the court’s plan.”

Joe Mansky, who represented Ventura and the Independence Party, concurred: “We were pretty happy with the outcome,” he said.

That doesn’t mean all four oppose Pogemiller’s plan. Thorstenson and Wattson still work at the Capitol and wouldn’t give their opinions on the reform proposal.

Peppin, now a political consultant, said “the process is just steeped in politics” and reckons that a judicial panel assigned first crack at drawing maps “will not be able to do it better than the Legislature.”

Mansky supports the plan, in part because it hearkens back to a commission Ventura formed for the same purpose.

Popularity and obscurity

In his current role as elections manager for Ramsey County, Mansky became a familiar face this year to the dedicated followers of the Norm Coleman/Al Franken Senate race, due to long hours he spent on the witness stand of the recent election-contest trial.

But seven years ago, the trio toiled over their redistricting maps in relative obscurity — outside of the state Capitol, that is.

“We mapmakers were very popular,” Peppin recalls. Legislators of every stripe were eager to know how things were shaping up — particularly for their home districts. “There was a reason for changing the locks and giving us all fresh keys,” he said.

Thorstenson’s recalls his home-away-from-home during those days the same way: “I was in a room at the State Capitol that even the janitors weren’t allowed to go into.”

Coming: Scenarios past mapmakers see for the redistricting to come

Joe Mansky (foreground), Ramsey County elections manager, said that there have been few problems encountered. “This is pretty typical for the type of recounts I’ve been involved with in the past,” he said. “It’s just larger and has more ballots involved.” As of 1:30, he estimated that there had been 10 to 12 ballots challenged by either the Franken or Coleman camps. “There will be fewer challenges as time goes on,” he predicted. “People kind of see what the lay of the land is.”

Mansky said that he had not yet seen Judge Dale Lindman’s order requiring Ramsey County to disclose the names of voters whose absentee ballots have been rejected. “We’ll do whatever it takes to comply with the Judge’s order,” he said. “I’m not sure what we’re going to do, but we’ll take whatever the path of least resistance is.”

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie stopped by to observe the proceedings. “A very common thing I’ve heard is a very small number of challenged ballots,” he said, although he declined to give a figure for how many votes had been contested. “Tonight at eight o’ clock you’ll get to see, with the whole planet, the results that are completed for the day. That’s the first time I’ll see it as well.”

Ritchie said there had been few reports of conflicts between the two campaigns. “A challenged ballot is a challenged ballot. It goes in the pile. We start at zero. A recount has nothing to do with November 4th. It starts at zero and it goes to three million.”