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.

Anoka County Elections Manager Rachel Smith during the recount.

Attorneys for former Sen. Norm Coleman pounced on an end-of-the-day revelation in his election contest trial: Three uncounted absentee ballots (with votes for Coleman) from overseas were discovered by election officials only since Wednesday. The news came just before adjournment for the day in testimony from Anoka County Elections Manager Rachel Smith before a stunned courtroom.

Also appearing in Anoka: A set of six more absentee ballots still in the envelopes in which voters mailed them back and several more rejected ballots that officials now say should be reviewed.

Within minutes, Coleman’s camp was crowing in the hallway outside the courtroom. “The ballots that were found today in Anoka stand in marked contrast to remarks the [Al] Franken campaign had the nerve to make” about the completeness of the recount before the Minnesota Supreme Court today, said Coleman attorney Ben Ginsberg. “The finding of the ballots is just another illustration of how illusory that count is.”

“In that precinct [where the ballots were found] Sen. Coleman had three more votes in the recount than he did on Election Night,” Ginsberg said. ”We’re optimistic about those [other newly found ballots containing votes for Coleman].”

Most of Anoka County lies in Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District, which re-elected Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in November.

Some of the ballots turned up during a data-practices-act search, hidden behind accompanying voter registration materials, according to The UpTake.

Also after today’s proceedings, Coleman spoke to reporters. “I did not misrepresent,” he maintained, when asked about comments he made on Sunday suggesting that Star Tribune reporters intentionally played to DFL Party cameras last October in asking him about allegations of financial mischief.

The discovery of three uncounted absentee ballots in Anoka County resolves one of the discrepancies in precinct tallies that Coleman complained about in a Jan. 21 court filing, according to Daily Kos blogger Tomtech, who was interviewed on the “Quick on The UpTake” program on radio station AM950 Thursday night. Here is the exhibit from that Coleman affadavit listing three missing ballots:

Neither campaign had RSVP’d to Smith about the rescheduled meeting as of 3:45 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, Smith told the Minnesota Independent. She said Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office helped Dakota County avoid the same scenario at another regional meeting this afternoon — and in her opinion that bodes well for renewed efforts in Anoka. Why didn’t Anoka take the approach of neighboring Sherburne County and simply refuse to review additional ballots proposed by the Coleman camp? “I was fine with doing that,” Smith told MnIndy — but when Coleman’s representative refused to proceed the review was stopped in its tracks.