By Shannon Fiecke, Staff Writer

Having grown up a politically active family, Jeanette Gloege wouldn’t have missed giving up two days of her life to serve as an observer for the first statewide general election recount since 1962.

Gloege, along with dozens of others from the DFL and GOP parties, gathered for the Scott County recount Wednesday and Thursday in a former funeral home on Fourth Avenue, now home to the county’s conference center. Their job was to challenge ballots with unusual markings as election judges sorted them into piles for Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken.

“I volunteered because it’s history,” said Gloege, a Belle Plaine resident who remembers going door-to-door for candidates as a child.

According to the Scott County recount report, the Franken team challenged 91 ballots and Coleman's team challenged 65.

While reviewing the last precinct on Thursday, an especially large one with about 2,100 votes, officials discovered an unsealed box of ballots. But, the vote totals came out the same, according to Deputy Recount Official Andy Lokken, one of two Minnesota secretary of state officials leading the effort in Scott County.

Such an error is not uncommon, Lokken said, especially after a long election night. Officials also dealt with five absentee ballots from that Savage precinct that hadn't been counted on election night because voters had received and filled out ballots from another city.

"Both parties mentioned we saved the best for last," Lokken said of the last precinct.

Charged with recounting approximately 67,000 ballots from 44 precincts, two election judges were seated at each of six tables in the conference center, with a challenger from each party next to them. As they counted ballots a precinct at a time, judges laid aside any ballots at the request of a challenger. 

After all the ballots from a precinct were counted, a crowd of political representatives gathered around the election judges to decide what disputed ballots would be forwarded to the state canvassing board for a final determination. 

As of 9:30 a.m. Friday, approximately 99 percent of precincts in the state had been recounted.

Before the recount started, criteria were established regarding the dates and time, how the recount would proceed and what types of ballots would be forwarded to the state, according to Lokken.

Ballots in which voters didn’t follow instructions, but it was clear what their intent was, were to be counted locally. In such cases, a voter might have, for instance, circled the candidate of their choice instead of filling in the oval, or perhaps initially voted for one candidate and then changed their mind, crossing the vote out.

Any ballots construed as too close were forwarded to the state board, Lokken said.

By noon Thursday, election judges had also reviewed five absentee ballots that hadn’t been counted before. Party officials agreed not to automatically request that such ballots be sent to the state board.

Generally, the reason such absentees aren’t counted on election night is because they were routed to the wrong precinct and not received by the correct precinct in time to be counted with other ballots, Lokken said.

One absentee ballot counted for the first time on Thursday wasn’t counted originally because a Prior Lake resident had filled out a Savage ballot that was incorrectly mailed to them. 

Although a WCCO-TV report made it look as though things had gotten heated between the party fractions as ballots were being challenged on Wednesday, a party observer said that there really hadn’t been high tensions and someone had just been playing matters up for the camera.

The lead challenger for the GOP, Mike Roman, a political consultant who came in from Philadelphia to volunteer, said although the Coleman camp hadn’t agreed with all the decisions made during the recount process, he thought the supervising state official had been “sincere in his efforts” to be fair.

The head Al Franken official at the county recount declined comment, deflecting questions to the campaign press office.

It’s too soon to tell whether recounted ballots from Scott County will sway the final outcome of the tight senatorial race, but election judge Roberta Ludowese of Prior Lake is confident that discrepancies in other counties wouldn’t be found here.

As they ate a quick lunch Thursday, Ludowese, a retired city of Savage employee, and Jan Saarela, retired Savage city clerk, raved about the county election staff and the good controls in place.

“I find it fascinating,” Ludowese said.

Saarela also mentioned that the recount hadn’t been as stressful as she thought it might be.

Shannon Fiecke can be reached at sfiecke@swpub.com.