Secretary Of State

Forget the comparisons to Florida. Think the Great Pyramids instead.
Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount is so refined, so elegant, so perfect that even its greatest excess — the unbridled, tit-for-tat ballot-challenges by both the Al Franken and Norm Coleman campaigns — has been raised to an art form. Monday’s recount action may have been replete with the apparent [...]

The Al Franken for Senate campaign is asking Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie to instruct all counties to redouble their efforts to find missing ballots. “There are votes in Minnesota that aren’t even being accounted for, much less being counted,” spokesman Andy Barr told reporters at a press conference at Franken headquarters in St. Paul this afternoon.

Video and more after the jump.

What seemed a far-fetched math geek dream only hours ago came true tonight: On Day Three of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount, the Al Franken and Norm Coleman campaigns again increased the number of challenged ballots by more than 40 percent over the previous day, to 1,525. That number dwarves by a factor of 13 the current 115-vote gap between Franken and Coleman, and suggests the challenged-ballot count will continue to grow exponentially, as MnIndy predicted Friday morning.

The man in charge of the recount in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate election predicts that come Inauguration Day, the dust will be settled enough for either Norm Coleman or Al Franken to take the oath of office.

Minnesota Majority, a conservative group that was until recently headed by Republican activist and former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, is under fire by current Secretary of State Mark Ritchie for alleged voter intimidation. Ritchie announced today that he has asked prosecutors to look into a phone call placed to a St. Paul man on behalf of the group.

Last weekend former Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer got the endorsement nod from House District 16B Republicans to replace embattled Rep. Mark Olson, whose conviction for domestic assault got him booted from the House Republican caucus. If they were looking to replace Olson with someone less controversial, Kiffmeyer may have not been the best [...]

On the question of drawing the careful, necessary line between campaigning and governing, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s recent actions suggest he lacks the good sense God gave a goose. Which is too bad: A lot is riding on DFLer Ritchie’s ability to rebuild the secretary of state’s office from the degradation it suffered under [...]

Hearing her tell it, Mary Kiffmeyer’s eight years as Minnesota Secretary of State sounds a bit like the biblical story of Job. Hounded by “unrelenting attacks” by Democrats, linked by association to the questionable tactics of fellow Republican Secretaries of State in Florida and Ohio, and challenged with technological concerns like Y2K compliance, she oversaw [...]

As Mary Kiffmeyer prepares to leave office, she’s not taking any chances: to “protect my record and my reputation