ST. CLOUD – Sherburne County officials said Saturday the county will pay for the recount of a close legislative contest, in an effort to quash rumors about how ballots were counted on election night and uploaded to the Minnesota Secretary of State website.
On Thursday, county officials announced updated vote counts that widened the gap between DFL Rep. Dan Wolgamott and Republican challenger Sue Ek, in a race that could have implications for which party controls the House.
The totals were updated after county staffers identified absentee ballots that were counted on election night but weren’t included in the unofficial totals posted to the Secretary of State’s website, due to an “an incomplete transfer of data from [one] scanner to the state election reporting system,” according to Sherburne County Administrator Bruce Messelt.
In a release Saturday, 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.”
However, he said, some ballot totals failed to upload to the Secretary of State’s website “due to an improperly cleared or partially damaged memory card that did not fully collect and transmit results from some of the processed mail-in ballots.” The memory card subsequently sent some generic data designed to test the reporting system prior to the election, creating “inflated vote totals that later decreased once the error was discovered.”
On Wednesday morning, the Secretary of State’s Office showed Wolgamott had a 28-vote lead over Ek. Updated results now show a difference of 191 votes, with Wolgamott having 50.36% of the vote and Ek 49.4%.
The change prompted Minnesota Republican Party Chair David Hann to call for the Secretary of State’s Office to investigate the results of the District 14B race and pay for a recount.
In a release Friday, Hann said initial reports on election night had Ek winning by four votes with 100% of the precincts reporting. Shortly after that, results showed her losing by 28 votes.
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