Partial recount of St. Cloud-area legislatives race begins Monday

ELK RIVER – Sherburne County officials will conduct a hand recount of precincts included in the Minnesota House District 14B race beginning at 10 a.m. Monday as part of efforts to quash rumors about how ballots were counted on election night and uploaded to the Secretary of State website.

DFL Rep. Dan Wolgamott leads Republican challenger Sue Ek by 191 votes. But for a short time on Nov. 5, the Secretary of State website showed Ek leading by four votes; the next morning, it showed Wolgamott leading by 28.

The totals were updated on Nov. 7 after county staffers identified absentee ballots that were counted on election night but weren’t included in the totals posted online because of an incomplete data transfer, according to County Administrator Bruce Messelt, who outlined the situation to the County Board on Wednesday.

“We stole some joy from some people. We failed in our job, so this is not meant to be an excuse. This is an explanation,” Messelt said. “We deeply regret that we let you and the residents down.”

He said that when county election officials uploaded the first batch of data to the Secretary of State’s website on election night, the memory card incorrectly included about four dozen ballots from a test batch used before the election to verify the equipment was working.

“We’re not 100% sure why [but] the memory card did not clear the test data,” Messelt said.

Officials tried again to upload the absentee ballots, but the Secretary of State’s website did not accept them because it does not allow double-counting, Messelt said.

Two days after the election, officials found the reporting error during an audit that examined whether the totals matched the number of ballots; they then worked with the Secretary of State’s office to clear the mail-in ballot section of the website and upload the correct counts.

County officials identified three close races — the 14B House seat, two Elk River school board seats and two Baldwin City Council seats — and offered to pay for hand recounts even though the results were outside the threshold for automatic recounts.

The vote count changes prompted state Republican Party Chair David Hann to call on the Secretary of State’s office to investigate the District 14B results and pay for a recount.

“We have now learned that additional ballots have been ‘found,’” Hann said Nov. 8. “These discrepancies are not only suspect but need to be investigated and explained to Minnesotans immediately.”

The following day, Messelt said: “Contrary to circulating rumors, no votes were ‘lost’ and none were ‘found.’” He said all ballots cast were properly received, documented and counted, “and chain of custody maintained.”

Sherburne County Board Member Andrew Hulse said Wednesday that he has “never been more disappointed with my party than I was over their behaviors with respect to this issue.”

Hulse said before being elected to the board, he was party chair of a Republican Senate district for a decade and is currently a Republican delegate. Despite this, he said, no one from the GOP reached out to him “before they started sending out press releases that had wildly inaccurate information.”

Hulse demanded a public apology from the state Republican party “for the misinformation and the harm that they caused.”

Hann did not return a message seeking comment Friday.

County officials last week recounted the votes in the Baldwin City Council race. It resulted in one candidate tallying one fewer vote and did not change the result of the race.

The county will recount ballots for the Elk River school board seats on Dec. 3.