St. Cloud-area legislative recount changes by 1 vote, doesn’t change state House numbers

ELK RIVER – After a nearly three-hour hand recount of three Sherburne County precincts on Monday, the results of the Minnesota House 14B race changed by just one vote.

Under the watchful eye of about two dozen visitors and party representatives, county election officials conducted the discretionary recount as part of efforts to quash rumors about how ballots were counted on election night and uploaded to the Secretary of State website.

Ahead of the recount, DFL Rep. Dan Wolgamott led Republican challenger Sue Ek by 191 votes. The recount showed Wolgamott lost two votes in one Sherburne County precinct and gained one vote in another precinct.

“Everything has been spot-on,” County Auditor-Treasurer Loraine Rupp said midway through the recount, referring to the absentee ballots that were counted first on Monday, followed by the ballots collected at the precincts on Election Day. “Those were the ones that were in question on election night.”

The confusion stemmed from the Secretary of State’s website showing Ek leading by four votes for a short time on election night; the next morning, it showed Wolgamott leading by 28.

The totals were updated two days later, on Nov. 7, after county staffers identified absentee ballots that were counted on election night but weren’t included in the totals posted online because of an incomplete data transfer, according to County Administrator Bruce Messelt, who outlined the situation to the Sherburne County Board on Wednesday.

“We stole some joy from some people. We failed in our job, so this is not meant to be an excuse. This is an explanation,” Messelt said. “We deeply regret that we let you and the residents down.”

He said that when county election officials uploaded the first batch of data to the Secretary of State’s website on election night, the memory card incorrectly included about four dozen ballots from a test batch used before the election to verify the equipment was working.

“We’re not 100% sure why, [but] the memory card did not clear the test data,” Messelt said.

Officials tried again to upload the absentee ballots, but the Secretary of State’s website did not accept them because it does not allow double-counting, Messelt said.

Two days after the election, officials found the reporting error during an audit that examined whether the totals matched the number of ballots; then, they worked with the Secretary of State’s Office to clear the mail-in ballot section of the website and upload the correct counts.

County officials identified three close races — the 14B House seat, two Elk River school board seats and two Baldwin City Council seats — and offered to pay for hand recounts even though the results were outside the threshold for automatic recounts in two races.

The vote count changes prompted state Republican Party Chair David Hann to call on the Secretary of State’s Office to investigate the District 14B results and pay for a recount.

“We have now learned that additional ballots have been ‘found,’ ” Hann said on Nov. 8. “These discrepancies are not only suspect but need to be investigated and explained to Minnesotans immediately.”

The following day, Messelt said: “Contrary to circulating rumors, no votes were ‘lost’ and none were ‘found.’ ” He said all ballots cast were properly received, documented and counted, “and chain of custody maintained.”

Sherburne County Board Member Andrew Hulse said Wednesday that he has “never been more disappointed with my party than I was over their behaviors with respect to this issue.”

Hulse said that before being elected to the board, he was party chair of a Republican Senate district for a decade and is currently a Republican delegate. Despite this, he said, few people reached out to him “before they started sending out press releases that had wildly inaccurate information.”

“There were wild rumors floating around, you know: ‘There was a box of ballots found or additional ballots being scanned that had been found’ — and none of that was true,” Hulse said Monday. “What that does is that fuels heated rhetoric that ends up getting aimed at our employees.”

During the board meeting, Hulse demanded a public apology from the state Republican party “for the misinformation and the harm that they caused.”

On Monday, he said he’s had several productive conversations with party representatives and elected officials.

“I think, at this point, things are moving in the right direction,” he said.

Hann did not return a message seeking comment.

Ek did not request to extend the recount to the entire district, which would have been at her expense had she requested it. She said Monday she is grateful to the county for the recount and said it was not surprising that the vote count didn’t significantly change. She’s also grateful for the “strong support” of the voters in the district, she said.

“I’m grateful for their prayers and encouragement,” Ek said. “Regardless of the outcome of this election, I look forward to running again in 2026.”

County officials last week recounted the votes in the Baldwin City Council race. It resulted in one candidate tallying one fewer vote and did not change the result of the race.

The county will recount ballots for the Elk River school board seats on Dec. 3.