Recounts complete in MN house races. What’s next?
Yesterday, a recount of ballots from three precincts located in Sherburne County (St. Cloud) was conducted.
One vote shifted from the incumbent Democrat state Rep. Dan Wolgamott (14B) to his challenger Sue Ek, cutting Wolgamott’s lead to 190 votes.
Ek appeared to have been the winner on election night (by four votes), according to unofficial results posted on the MN Secretary of State’s website. By the next morning, Ek was shown behind by 28 votes. A batch of absentee votes was later added two days later to increase Wolgamott’s lead, which held up in the hand recount of ballots.
As with the one-vote change in last week’s Scott County (Shakopee) house recount (54A), the outcome didn’t change.
It seems that they never did find the missing 20 or so ballots in Shakopee that could have potentially flipped the result.
Update: In a Thanksgiving-eve, pre-holiday, news dump, Scott County announced that 20 missing ballots had, in fact, been thrown out and later shredded. The county abandoned the search for the 21st missing ballot. I’m not kidding.
AlphaNews reports that Republicans plan to contest the Shakopee (54A) result. The outlet reports, quoting house Republican leader Lisa Demuth,
“The recount may be over, but the investigation into the 21 missing ballots in District 54A is still ongoing,” said House Speaker-designate Lisa Demuth.
Other than that effort, it’s not clear whether there will be any further legal or administrative actions taken in either race to challenge the now-official results. Nor does it appear that there will be any consequences flowing from, or lessons learned from, the massive and compounding errors made by local election officials. On election night, two house races appeared to have gone for Republicans, only to be reversed later.
In House District 40B (Roseville), the losing Republican candidate is challenging whether, in fact, the winning Democrat candidate lives within the district boundaries.
As it currently stands, the State House of Representatives is deadlocked in a rare 67-67 tie. Members are proceeding along those lines and yesterday announced the Republican and Democratic co-chairs for each of the two dozen (24) committees for 2025.
The legislative session begins on January 14.