Sue Ek's recount statement

Starting at 10:00 am Monday morning, Sherburne County performed a recount of their ballots for the HD-14B House race. Here is Ms. Ek's statement:
I'm grateful to Sherburne County for the recount. It was not surprising that it did not significantly change my vote total. More will be done to investigate the various abnormalities that occurred.

The strong support of the voters in 14B has been a gift. I'm grateful for their prayers and encouragement.

Regardless of the outcome of this election, I look forward to running again in 2026.

I've written about the "abnormalities" highlighted in this race. While a recount has a purpose in verifying the ballot totals, it doesn't indicate where those ballots came from or whether the ballots are real or counterfeit.

While I'm fully aware that making such a statement won't go without snide comments, that isn't a big deal to me. Few people know that 2 legal actions have been filed because there are questions about counterfeit ballots. The first action was filed in Olmstead County, the other in Stearns County. Apparently, the sample ballots aren't identified as sample ballots on the form itself. All a person has to do is type in their address, city, state and zip code, wait for the page to load, then hit print. If you have the right card stock, that ballot will print out.

One of the things that I learned throughout this process is that ballots are different.

For instance, mail-in early voting ballots are folded twice so that the3y'll fit into the envelopes supplied by the county. The ballots used for early in-person voting aren't folded. That's useful to know if a significant portion of the ballots for a recount were mail-in ballots. That way, the county can identify how many ballots were either a) in-person early voting or day-of in-person voting (no folds) or b) mail-in early voting (2 folds).

One of the observers at today's recount was told that a significant portion of the HD-14B ballots in Sherburne County were mail-in ballots. The number of votes counted as of 11:08 pm on Nov. 5, 2024 was 19,404. The number of votes cast as of 5:38 pm on Nov. 8 was 19,819 votes. That's a difference of 415 votes. Rep. Wolgamott got 305 of those 415 votes or 73.5% of the additional votes.

While it's common for the DFL to outdistance Republicans in early voting, it isn't a stretch to question whether the DFL submitted that many more early votes than Republicans. This year, ?Republicans put a major emphasis on early voting. In most states, the proportion of early voting ballots was closer to 60%-40% in favor of the Democrats. Getting three-fourths of the early ballots isn't that likely. I'd love hearing what percentage of the mail-in ballots Wolgamott got in the rest of the district.

I wrote here that Minnesota's election system is a laughingstock. I still stand by that statement. Florida counts 10,865,000 ballots statewide and has their vote totals reported to the networks within 4 hours of the polls closing. We can't things done by Thanksgiving. At least KARE11 got their reportting right:

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