The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike Lindell’s request for a full hand recount of the Aug. 11 primary, siding instead with a state-approved partial recount plan, The Center Square reported. The ruling was released Saturday.
What the court said
In a six-page ruling, Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson wrote that Lindell’s focus on “alleged anomalies confuses the purpose of a manual recount with an election contest,” according to The Center Square. The outlet also reported the court found a full recount “without merit.”
What gets counted under the state plan
According to a Lindell campaign statement cited by The Center Square, the state’s “contingent plan” would count only votes for Lindell and Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth in the Republican primary. Votes cast for the other five Republican candidates would not be counted, nor would Democratic primary ballots—even though they were printed on the same ballot form, the campaign said.
Lindell’s response and funding offer
Lindell said he would appeal the decision. “My name was on 1,100,000 ballots and they all need to be looked at and counted,” he said in an interview, per The Center Square. The outlet reported Lindell had proposed to pay the full costs of a discretionary recount—estimated at $825,000—which it said would have been the largest privately financed statewide recount in Minnesota history.
Results, lawsuit, and next steps
Demuth won the Republican gubernatorial primary with 179,683 votes to Lindell’s 134,282—a margin of 45,401, The Center Square reported. After alleging “multiple abnormalities,” Lindell sued the Minnesota secretary of state last week over what his campaign called a narrowed recount scope announced the same day as the Aug. 24 recount deadline. “Narrowing the scope does not shrink the recount—it disables it,” the campaign said. The Center Square also noted Lindell has long pushed to eliminate election voting machines.
