Recount begins Wednesday

County auditor’s office gears up for the U.S. Senate race’s big challenge

By Tom Hintgen (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Photo by Tom Hintgen

County Auditor Wayne Stein holds a stack of county internally generated reports from election night, left, and an abstract of votes cast for federal, state and county offices, right.

Several election judges from throughout Otter Tail County will have their work cut out for them the next few days. That’s because, on Wednesday, the county will join in the recount process for the U.S. Senate election. The two candidates are Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken.

A training session for eight teams of two or three people per team will begin at 3 p.m. today. In all, the teams will review 32,845 Otter Tail County ballots.

“Even though the deadline is Dec. 5, we’ll be done with the recount well before that,” Otter Tail County Auditor Wayne Stein said. “If all goes well, it’s about a three-day process.”

The State Canvassing Board meets today in St. Paul to officially get the process underway for Otter Tail County and 86 other counties in Minnesota. Most counties will begin the recount process Wednesday or Thursday.

All county ballots are in a secure location at the Government Services Center in Fergus Falls. Assisting the recount teams during the process will be Stein and County Election Administrator Vi Manderud.

Only ballots from one precinct at a time will be positioned at a single table. One stack will be for Coleman and another for Franken. Representatives from each party will be allowed to sit across the table from each recount team.

“If there’s a challenge to a ballot, the party reps will try to reach an agreement with the recount team at each table,” Stein said. “If no agreement is reached, those challenged ballots will be marked with designated labels and sent by special courier to the Minnesota Secretary of State office after the county recount is completed.”

The original ballot being challenged and one copy will be sent to the Secretary of State office, one copy will be made for the recount official (Stein) and one copy will go to each of the parties (Democrat and Republican).

Election officials in St. Paul will make the final decisions regarding challenged ballots.

Each community outside of Fergus Falls and each township represents one precinct. For larger precincts, if agreeable to all concerned, a team could consist of more than three members.

Late last week Sen. Coleman's lead over Democrat Franken was only 236 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast, statewide. That’s a difference between the top two candidates of about one one-hundredth of a percentage point. This, by state law, led to an automatic recount.