In a further sign that Republican candidate Tom Emmer is going to put up a serious fight in the Minnesota gubernatorial recount, the state GOP has announced the hiring of a very important name for his legal team: Former state Supreme Court Justice Eric Magnuson, who previously served on the state Canvassing Board in the 2008 Senate recount, and will now serve in the role of chief litigator on Team Emmer.
As the Star Tribune notes, Magnuson played a special role within the Canvassing Board itself, keeping detailed notes on the sorts of disputed markings on ballots that the board would encounter, and the “precedents” on how they would count them. (For example, he helped to establish a rule that the state’s law against a person signing their ballot would not apply in cases where a person had crossed out a previous choice, then signed the alteration in the manner in which people are accustomed to marking up legal documents.)
Magnuson and the rest of Team Emmer face a tough fight here. Democratic nominee Mark Dayton leads by slightly under 9,000 votes, a margin that many observers think is unlikely to be reversed. By comparison, the 2008 recount resulted in a net margin shift of only about 500 votes, from a total pool of ballots that was nearly 50% larger than the one here. A bigger question, perhaps, is whether this process could last into early January, when the new term is supposed to begin — which would result in Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty staying on in the interim, to work with a newly-elected Republican legislature.
But it’s interesting to see that the hiring of a former election official from that recount in some ways represents a big change for the Republican strategy from last time. Back then, Norm Coleman’s legal team often disparaged the board’s decisions, and the GOP’s public relations campaign cast the board as being pliant tools of the Democrats. For example, a Wall Street Journal editorial from the time declared:
Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.
Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on “counting every vote” wants to shut the process down. He’s getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.
But as state GOP chair Tony Sutton now says in the party’s press release: “Eric is an enormously talented litigator who is independent minded, thoughtful and substantive. As a former member of the State Canvassing Board, Eric understands the issues at stake during this process. Eric is a tremendous addition to our legal team, and I know he will do his part to make certain that every legally cast vote is counted.”
