by INFORUM
Governor recount battle heats up
November 20, 2010 at 6:00 pm in INFORUM
Dayton campaign raises defenses
ST. PAUL A post-election battle for Minnesota votes cranked up Friday when Mark Dayton hired two recount legal experts and Tom Emmer’s Supreme Court request met with opposition. Continue Reading
Do I have this right?
It has already been determined that there are several precincts in which the number of ballots exceeded the number of voters that signed the register.
“If there are more votes than voters in any precinct, state law requires an election judge to randomly remove ballots until the numbers match.â€
In some precincts “election judges did not properly determine whether the number of ballots equaled the number of voters.â€
Those results were then sent to the State Canvassing Board without the ballot-voter comparisons being done.
Emmer wants “the Canvassing Board, in charge of certifying a winning candidate, to do the ballot-voter comparisons they say did not happen properly in all precincts election night.â€
A Dayton court document tells the high court that the recount should proceed without reconciling the ballot-voter count as provided by election law.
What is Dayton and his party worried about?
Dayton’ says there is no reason to believe “that this election was tainted by error.â€
If it wasn’t “error†that is the cause for the irregularities, as Dayton contends, what else explains the ballot-voter discrepancies already identified in some precincts?
The only thing that comes to my skeptical mind is fraud.
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Mr. Moorhead, you could not have made the comments you have without having read that the elections followed a ruling made more than thirty years ago whereby the election judges only had to reconcile the number of votes against the the number of receipts. If Mr Emmer had wanted the rules changed, he should have done so before the election, not afte he lose.
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You’re right, one of the 2 of us is not up on current election law.
The 2010 Minnesota State Legislature, not Mr. Emmer, wanted the rules changed, and did so before this election.
Read 2010 Minnesota Statutes: 204C.24, subdivision 1, Information requirements. (d)
Read 2010 Minnesota Statutes: 204C.20, subdivision 2, Excess ballots.
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I believe the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled on this. Mr. Emmer did not prevail.
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