The recount that didn't count
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A recount in Rice County got underway Monday morning in Faribault. At stake was a city council seat in the city of Northfield.
The incumbent, Kris Voss, was running for re-election and a former city council member, Dana Graham, was running to get back on the council.
The two finished just 14 votes apart on election night. Voss had the lead with 3,726 votes.
So the two candidates were on hand for the recount.
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It was a very close race, about one tenth of one percent of the vote. But after they finished working their way through four of the city's nine precincts, Graham -- who'd lost -- conceded.
Like most recounts, there wasn't a big shift in the outcome. In fact, only one vote changed from the ballots that were recounted.
The process was very deliberate, with three sets of judges who would sort all the ballots into piles for each of the two candidates -- and another pile for blank votes -- and then go back and count them.
When the count didn't match the election night total, the officials would go back and count them again, and again and again until they got a consistent result.
It's extremely meticulous and extremely time consuming process.
Remember, there are about 3 million votes to count in Minnesota's Senate race so you can see the task elections officials are going to have at hand when they start a recount.
Alex Beeby, from Northfield serves as a head judge on Election Day. He's very familiar with the whole process and spent about three hours this morning, leafing through the ballots.
There were a couple that were mismarked, and a couple piles that had to be recounted over and over. But he's pretty sanguine about the whole thing.
"It's good to see that the process we use on election night runs through," said Beeby. "The machines we have are extremely accurate and we have a really good process. Its good to know things work out that way." That was after just three hours of counting, remember, and the counting in the U.S. Senate election could go on for days, even weeks.
The Secretary of State put out a list this afternoon that designates 107 different locations where they could be counting ballots after the State Canvassing Board meets on Tuesday.
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