Do you have confidence in the Minnesota recount process?

Eric Ringham November 23, 2010, 5:00 AM Nov 23, 2010

Officials could soon begin a hand recount of 2 million ballots cast in this month’s voting for a Minnesota governor. Today’s Question: Do you have confidence in the Minnesota recount process?

2010 Governor's Race

About the blogger

Eric Ringham

eringham@mpr.org

Hiram

As long as they don’t randomly throw out ballots, I do.

DMox

Practice makes perfect, right?

Duane

Only when it comes out in favor of my candidate.

Tom

I have confidence the Dem’s will win, no matter how many ballots they will need to randomly throw out…

Dennis Johnson

It’s a waste of time, money and brain power. The candidate that loses can concede defeat and quit wasting our time and resources.

Craig

Party leadership on both sides of the aisle seem incapable of organizing anything but stalemate at the legislature. It’s amazing anyone thinks they could suddenly be able to design and execute a plan that would rig an entire gubernatorial election.

gail

As long as it is not the same mess up the senate race count was. Hoping they learned a thing or five.

Eiolgj

Yes, I have confidence. I would question either side if that side makes frivolous protests. Whoever is down: concede, then support the newly elected person. If the side that is down can only win by throwing out votes, well, then, GO AWAY.

Steve D

Yes, I do!!!! My wife is a lead election judge in our township and the others are all long time neighbors. While I may not agree with their politics I trust their honesty. The county auditor has held his position for I believe over 30 years I have no reason to distrust him. I believe if all the complainers would take the time to become trained and certified election judges they would see how hard EVERYONE works to have fair and honest elections. Does this mean there are no mistakes, well of course not, they are human after all. If there was more election judges so that the existing ones would not have to work such long days maybe there would be less errors. Before you bitch and complain come and help out.

Steve the Cynic

I have great confidence that the recount will determine with a high degree of accuracy which candidate got the most votes. I am equally confident that our election system does not determine who should actually win. Dayton was my first choice, but Tom Horner really should have won. Horner was the consensus candidate, being the first choice of a few and the second choice of almost everyone else. Even with ranked-choice voting he would have lost, because he would have had the fewest first-choice votes. (Similarly, Dean Barkley should have won the 2008 senate election.) I don’t expect this to change. Extreme partisans will never allow any electoral reform designed to choose consensus candidates, because both sides benefit from the polarization.

David Rogde

Yes, it’s first class. The GOP is just game playing to prevent the winner from taking office January 15, and thus thwarting the state’s chance to insure the poor through medicaid changes in the new healthcare law.
Tracy

For now I do. I can’t recall who but did’nt somone say that they were going to turn over every rock to find every republican vote? This concerns me cuase all votes should count. I would be skeptical/apprehensive if Emmer ends up winning after the recount. After the lead that Dayton had before is would cause me to question both the original count and the recount.
Duane F.

I do have confidence in the recount process. I hope there will not be a bunch of wining from which ever candidate loses the race.
Steve

Absolutely. Contrast our last recount to the disaster in Florida. I read that every disputed ballot in the Coleman/Franken recount was scanned and posted online. Emmer is giving us a good display of his leadership style.
Debbie

Back in 2008 I overheard one of the election judges at my polling place in Apple Valley commenting that around 300 people had already registered to vote at the polls that day and they were all mostly from the same apartment complex. At the time I didn’t think much of it but after the Coleman/Franken recount was final I often wondered about it. This election’s snafu worries me because just a touch of someone’s finger both added and deleted votes from a race. I worry about Mark Ritchie’s integrity and the security of Minnesota’s voting process. So in all honesty my answer to today’s question would have to be “not really”
Stuart

Yes. We had 2 possible overcounts in my precinct. Human error. No need to toss out 2 random votes. Let’s toss out the vulgar write ins instead, since they don’t really count, do they?

Debbie, read Steve D’s note. That’s the truth, so long as honest citizens actually work in the system. For all the fear of city folks stealing the election, there are those who fear the rural folks will steal it. Add party label to this if you wish. Just don’t get rid of those paper ballots.
Craig

Yes, I have confidence in the process. As long as we have dedicated professionals and volunteers to manage the vote and we have a paper audit trail for the votes, we will have fair elections and recounts, when necessary.
steve

yes i have confidence and the democratic process reigns supreme!
Kirk

I have a great deal of well-placed confidence in Minnesota’s election process. What I have lost is confidence that those challenging these results have any intention of playing fairly, and by the rules.
Tom

I do have confidence in the Minnesota recount process. I have lived all over the U.S., and I think Minnesota is one of the states with the highest integrity in the bureaucracy.
Brad

I have complete confidence in our election process. I have no confidence with the integrity of the parties challenging it. The two party political system has become a win-at-all-costs deal that only cares about its own advancement.
Jodie Walters

Yes, but given the state’s budget problems I think that recounts should only be triggered by closer elections than the current situation.
Stephanie

I believe it is time for our state, the whole state, and not just Hennepin County or Minneapolis, should have choice ranked voting. This would eliminate the issue of recounts. After voting for Tim Penny, I changed my mind about voting 3rd party. It is not an option! The recount process has been redefined and streamlined. It is accountable and responsible. For anyone to say it is not is a poor loser.
BruceJ

Yes. Slightly less confidence in the courts.
Albert

I believe that Secretary Richie is so very committed to the process that if there is any fault to be had it is at a more local level. I don’t beleive it is intentional. I see the people at my polling place, (which is very small), taking the process incredibly seriously as well. I believe in the system and I know that there are always issues.
Ross Reynolds

I absolutely trust the way Richie is running the process. I find it very frustrating that we allow these multiple of court challenges that really just delay the inevitable. Count the ballots and be done with it. Count all the ballots period.
bsimon

I have faith in the optical scanners; I expect the hand recount to reinforce that faith.
Owen Strand

No.

Three things make me skeptical:

We don’t require ID of voters,

We allow vouching,

An elected Secretary of State is by definition biased.

There are so many vehement claims of honesty that I see it as protesting too much.
Sheri S

Yes! I find the Secretary of State’s office capable and filled with leaders of integrity.

But the comment today by Emmer’s attorney Eric Magnuson’s that “sometimes following the law can be inconvenient” made me a bit queasy.
Greg

Absolutely yes. It makes me proud to be a Minnesotan that so many people are so concerned about making sure all the votes are counted.

It’s too bad that, despite the painful but necessary deliberations of the extremely close Franken-Coleman recount, the Republicans are trying to sow doubt. This is a state that values representative democracy and playing with people’s fears does great harm to all of us.
Kevin VC

Yes.

Do I have faith others will stay out of the way?

No.

Once the recount occurs then if there is any discovered irregularities then deal with them. NOTHING seems unusual.

Unless something is known and documented its just rumor. Rumors often start because there is no evidence…. or proof…. or does not match reality….

Recounts are part of a process of seeing if there is a problem and deal with them…
Ron

I have full confidence in the state’s process. But I do wish just this once they’d force Mr. Sutton to count every ballot by hand. He’ll still lose, but if he’s going to claim fraud at that point he can only point a finger at himself.
Bruce J

Republicans in this state appear ready to file frivolous challenge after frivolous challenge during the recount. Dayton is scheduled to take office on January 3. With the Republican takeover of the state houses, if they can keep Tea Party Timmy P. in office, they plan to ram through as much right wing legislation as they can in January.

Michelle Bachmann also plans to claim that Mark Dayton was actually born in Kenya
Mr Rhee

That an MPR Poll would be heavily skewed toward believeing a corrupt system that allows votes from people who were not registered to count, I surely believe that. Under no circumstances should more votes be counted than there were registered voters. Instead, 3rd party fringe candidates should be dropped from the ballot and the election done over with the 2 top vote getters going at each other. This would cost money no doubt, but at least until a 3rd party actually had enough support they would no longer be able to skew the results! Which is what 3rd party groups are being used for by the 2 major parties now. I wish there was another way to insure an honest result the first time through, but there doesn’t seem to be one.