That’s the apparent situation in Shakopee, MN, where the incumbent DFL state Rep. Brad Tabke leads his Republican opponent, Aaron Paul, by 14 votes out of nearly 22,000 votes cast in District 54A. The margin between the two is smaller than the number of write-in votes cast in the race, and close enough to trigger an automatic recount.
You will recall that on election night, the Minnesota Secretary of State published “final” figures in the race showing a narrow victory for the Republican candidate, only to have the counting continue and continue.
But another twist in the saga emerged yesterday. The Fox 9-TV headline,
Mystery cloaks MN House race as recount approaches
The mystery? 20 “missing” ballots. Fox 9, again,
“We had 329 people check in to absentee vote,” said Scott County Elections Administrator Julie Hanson. “We received 309 ballots back. I can’t guarantee that a ballot was issued to those 20 voters. I can’t speculate at this point. We have done a lot of auditing, a lot of digging and investigation.”
KSTP-TV’s Tom Hauser notes in his report,
When there is confusion and computer errors in election races decided by big margins, few people take notice. When confusion and computer errors occur in very close races, everyone seems to notice.
A hand recount of the ballots that the county can locate will occur on November 21. The outcome has significance beyond Shakopee and Scott County. On current results, the state house of representative is locked in a 67-67 tie between Republicans and Democrats. A different result in the Scott County recount would give Republicans a 68-66 majority and sole control over the chamber.
Another recount will occur in Sherburne County for District 14B (near St. Cloud), where the Democratic incumbent state rep leads by about 190 votes. As in Scott County, a premature, “final” vote count had shown the Republican challenger also winning that race.
“Move along, nothing to see here,” say the experts. MinnPost reports,
Vote count reporting errors in Scott, Sherburne ‘unfortunate’ but can happen, says elections systems expert
Vote totals in two legislative races changed after county election officials discovered election night reporting errors.
But why do the “errors” and “changes” only occur in a single direction? At present, Democrats control the state senate by a single seat, 34-33, the state house is tied 67-67, the U.S. congressional representation is evenly split 4-4 between the two parties. Literally, the parties in Minnesota could not be more evenly divided. Statistically, election errors should break both ways.
The expert speaks,
“The trick is we try really hard to catch our errors and fix them before, rather than after, making anything public,” he said. “If you find yourself having to publicly correct and publicly revise you’re going to have a real hit to confidence, to people’s willingness to trust.”
The Fox-9 and MinnPost reports both the detail the numerous and compounding errors made by these two counties in counting these two close races.
Back in August, our exclusive Thinking Minnesota public opinion poll surveyed Minnesota voters on the issue of election integrity. It’s not surprising that 96 percent of Democrats trust Minnesota’s election integrity, but only 55 percent of Republicans.
After these recent episodes, the latter number is sure to fall.