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Sherburne County says it plans to pay for a hand recount in a few close races to confirm the accuracy of last week’s election results.

County officials say a damaged or uncleared memory card did not fully collect and transmit results from some mail-in ballots to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office on election night. That led to the state website displaying inaccurate unofficial results for Sherburne County.

 of DFL state Rep. Dan Wolgamott over his Republican challenger Sue Ek to 191 votes. The state House is currently on track for a 67-67 tie in party control.

The corrected totals also impacted races for the Elk River school board and Baldwin City Council.

Sherburne County officials say all ballots were properly processed and counted. But they’ve asked the secretary of state for permission to conduct recounts at the county’s expense for the close races most affected by the delayed reporting — even though the results are now outside the margin for a publicly funded recount

County Administrator Bruce Messelt said last week that staff caught the discrepancy when they were reviewing data for the canvassing board, which certifies the election results. Until that certification happens, the vote counts remain unofficial.

“All of the ballots are here physically. They were all logged in,” Messelt said. “We’ve tracked (their) chain of custody, and they were actually counted on Election Day. They just did not get updated to the website for public viewing.”

Messelt said staff were aware of a file transfer issue on election night, but thought they had corrected it.

“I think with more time and more staff, we would have caught it earlier,” he said. “But the checks and balances allow for this. That’s why they’re called unofficial results. And as soon as we saw it, we did our job and investigated it and corrected it.”

House Republicans said Ek is still weighing whether to pursue a recount in the House race. The cost for recounting precincts outside of Sherburne County would fall to her campaign to cover.

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County officials say a damaged or uncleared memory card did not fully collect and transmit results from some mail-in ballots to the Minnesota Secretary of State's office on election night. That led to the state website displaying inaccurate unofficial results for Sherburne County.

Sherburne County officials announced over the weekend that they are going to pay for a recount in a few close races there. 

Sherburne County will pay for recount of election results in close races

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