Posted: January 12, 2009

Minnesota recounts: differences between 1962 and 2008

The Star Tribune has a column analyzing some of the differences between the 1962 gubernatorial race recount and today’s Senate race recount and contest. Here are some of the differences:

• The law back then did not provide for the automatically triggered administrative recount that Minnesota has today. That provision was not enacted until after the chaotic presidential recount in Florida in 2000.
• There were 97,000 challenges in the ’62 race contrasted with only about 6,600 in the '08 Senate race.
• Incumbent Andersen stayed in office while the election contest was litigated resulting in his eventual defeat by challenger Rolvaag.
• One of Coleman’s strategies is to seek the inclusion of selected absentee ballots that have thus far been rejected by election officials or the Franken campaign. Rolvaag sought to exclude more absentee ballots in his contest. The contest court in '63, however, upheld the decisions of local officials on the inclusion and rejection of absentee ballots.
• The columnist emphasizes that Coleman likely faces more national pressure to continue fighting than did Andersen in 1963. She cites EL@M Director Edward Foley’s position that neither candidate should appeal the decision of the contest court if it viewed as a neutral body and is unanimous in its opinion.