What's happening with the Sue Ek-Dan Wolgamott race?

The more I dig into the race between Sue Ek and Dan Wolgamott, the more confusing things get. Sue Ek was interviewed by WCCO-TV's Esme Murphy on Monday. According to the brief news segment, the Minnesota Secretary of State's website said that the race between Sue Ek and Rep. Wolgamott was last updated at 11:08 PM on 11/05/2024 with Sue Ek leading with 9,704 votes compared with Rep. Wolgamott's 9,700 votes with 55 write-in votes. Clearly, that's easily within the 0.5% margin to qualify for a state-paid-for recount. That's when things got strange.

Murphy then narrated that "When the page refreshed, the District 14B page showed Democrat incumbent Dan Wolgamott ahead. He now has a 191-vote lead." Actually, it doesn't say that. It shows Rep. Wolgamott leading with 50.4% of the vote and 1,005 total votes. Sue Ek has 9,814 votes, which represents 49.4% of the vote. What's on the screen doesn't say what time it was last updated at or on what date it was updated.

If that isn't weird enough, there's more that wasn't reported in this segment. After the Secretary of State's website said that Ek was leading by 4 votes, a later screen shot showed Ek trailing by 28 votes. This wasn't included in the WCCO segment. Why wasn't it? I'd think that'd be required for a complete reporting of the facts. This is the video of the segment:

According to the article, Sherburne County said that "some ballot totals failed to upload" and in the name of transparenncy, "the county will pay for the recount."

That's a nice gesture but what about the cost of the audit that's required before Sherburne County does its canvas? Who pays for that? Will Sherburne County pay for that, too, because it's important to know why the ballots didn't upload properly. Further, which batches of ballots didn't upload properly? Finally, why should I just trust that the ballots didn't upload proprerly?

Later in the news segment, Murphy reported on the race between DFL Incumbent Brad Tabke and challenger Aaron Paul. At the time of the initial screen shot on that race, Tabke led by 14 votes. What's omitted by Murphy is the fact that Paul led Tabke by 360 votes with 100% of the vote in. Why did Murphy skip the important details that Tabke, the DFL incumbent, trailed by 360 votes? That's a rather important detail to omit. A veteran reporter like Murphy shouldn't forget information like that. Notice that she had a screen shot of the date and time on the initial screen shot of Ek's race but didn't have nearly the same amount of detail after that. Blois Olson offers limited insight into the Ek-Wolgamott race in this interview:

In every recount that's reversed an election result, the result has favored the DFL. In each case, additional ballots were 'found' after the counting had stopped. Why should the people trust results like that? The odds of that happening that many times in a row are astronomical. That strains the DFL's credibility.

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