Recount fact and opinion

The gubernatorial recount continued Friday and into Saturday with highlights being an angry judge scolding his former chief judge, lots of frivolous ballots and a press conference that seemed designed to garner a least a little positive publicity for Republican Tom Emmer.


The relevant facts are thus:

After all 2.1 million ballots had been recounted, Emmer gained 107 votes.

The canvassing board will rule on about 1,000 challenged ballots, four fifths of them from the Emmer campaign

Even if every challenged ballot fell Emmer's way, it wouldn't be enough to make up 8,700 votes.

Local officials called 2,880 challenges by the parties "frivolous," 99 percent were challenges from the Emmer campaign.


Judge Paul Anderson gave a stern warning to the Emmer team and the former Supreme Court Chief Judge Eric Magnuson, who is representing Emmer, pointing out that bringing frivolous court actions whatever the topic is behavior for which attorneys can be punished.

Anderson went on to say Magnuson was more or less violating his own rulings and court directives from the 2008 recount years ago and that Magnuson might also be violating code of professional conduct for attorneys.

(It's interesting to note that Magnuson, now working with Emmer and presumably Pawlenty, was called "unwise" by Pawlenty and "activist" by Emmer last year when he ruled Pawlenty's unallotment decision was illegal.)

They must consider him to have "wised up" and be "less activist" now.

Anderson also made references to the Emmer campaign "disenfranchising" voters. Ramsey County Judge Gregg Johnson, another member of the Canvassing Board, used words like "ludicrous."

It was a rather remarkable event.

I've met Judge Paul Anderson a time or two and I was always impressed with him as someone who saw value in the judicial process and wanted to educate the public as much as possible about this important branch of government.

He never struck me as a political or partisan individual.

In his news conference Friday Emmer seemed to be addressing the number of frivolous votes Emmer volunteers in various counties were making, far above those being challenged by the Dayton campaign.

Emmer and the Republican Party claim those volunteers were "overzealous" and after they look at the frivolous votes, they might be willing to withdraw them. The Canvassing Board is going to allow this.

Over and over again, the news media asked Emmer how he thought any challenge could possibly provide him almost 9,000 vote turnaround.

He made allusions to the same-day registration system, and the reconciliation process where votes must match the number of voters. But those appear to be longshots in any case. The matching voter remedy if there was one, would take votes away randomly, from both voters.

Emmer also suggested he wants to see that Supreme Courts ruling on denying his initial challenge to have the votes reconciled one way. Then he would be able to explain his next legal course if action if any.

All in all, I don't see the Emmer campaign getting much upside from all of this. They clearly angered at least one of the judges in this, when average citizens see the ballots that were challenged all over the state by the Emmer campaign (many not even close to being unclear who people were voting for and in some cases, a write vote was suggested as a way that a voter would be indentified), most people will not be happy taxpayer money was spent on these frivolous challenges.

Emmer did continue to reiterate his intention is not to delay the seating of the new government.

My experience in public relations is the more you insist you're not trying to do something, the less people believe you.

Stay tuned.