The campaign of Minnesota Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer is continuing to challenge a whole lot of ballots in the state recount — and a whole lot of those challenges are being declared frivolous by local officials, making for some very interesting squabbles.
As the Star Tribune reports, in Hennepin County (Minneapolis) alone, Team Emmer has made about 1,600 challenges that have been declared frivolous by local officials. Election manager Rachel Smith made an attempt to speed things up — which she quickly abandoned, after Emmer attorney Tony Trimble attempted to sue:
To speed things up on Wednesday, Smith asked to add three or four counting tables to the 25 already set up.
Trimble objected, saying if she did so, the campaign would take the county to court. “They can’t change the rules,” he said.
The state Republican Party also blasted Smith. In a statement, the party said Smith “tried to change the rules in the middle of game to advance the interests of Mark Dayton.”
Smith then ditched the idea, saying that it was “not worth the fight.”
See here for a primer on the issue of how ballots that are challenged by a campaign end up being handled. The bottom line is that challenges that the local officials deem legitimate will result in the ballots being taken out of the count, pending adjudication by the State Canvassing Board. Challenged ballots declared to be frivolous by the local officials will still be counted, though they are also documented and set aside for possible review later on.
The Star Tribune has a gallery of ballots challenged by the Emmer campaign in Hennepin County, which the local officials have declared to be frivolous challenges. And indeed, they do seem to be pretty obvious votes.
Minnesota Public Radio also has a gallery of challenged ballots from throughout the state — some of them clearly frivolous challenges, and some just weird.
For example, at number 18, the person who wrote in “I HATE MINNESOTA” and “MINNESOTA SUCKS” in the write-in spaces of some down-ballot contests probably didn’t legally violate the prohibition on signing your ballot or otherwise placing an identifying mark. I do expect the State Canvassing Board and/or other authorities to ultimately uphold that ballot — but they won’t like it very much.
Also, at number 9, the voter who wrote in “self” in a dozen down-ballot races also probably didn’t violate the identification ban. After all, if a lot of people wrote in “self” and won an election, how would the state know where to find the right winner?
Going into the recount, Democrat Mark Dayton led by 8,770 votes, or 0.42%. While this is within the 0.5% needed to trigger a statewide recount, many observers have doubted that Emmer could pull ahead, as Dayton’s lead is probably too wide to be reversed barring any surprising discoveries in the hand count. However, a possible drawn-out legal contest could potentially result in Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty staying in office in the interim, with the opportunity to work with a newly elected Republican legislature.
