MINNEAPOLIS – Minnesota Republicans filed a lawsuit Monday to try to force a rerun of a state House race where the incumbent Democrat won by 14 votes — but in which investigators concluded that election workers probably destroyed 20 valid absentee ballots after failing to count them.
It's a race that could determine the balance of power in the Minnesota House, where leaders from both parties are working out the details of a power-sharing agreement that currently presumes a 67-67 tie when the Legislature convenes next month. A Republican victory in a special election could shift that balance to a two-vote, 68-66 GOP majority.
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Democrats have a one-vote majority in the state Senate. So regardless of the outcome in the disputed race, Minnesota will be returning to some degree of divided government in 2025 after two years of full Democratic control.
“The actions of Scott County elections officials constitute a serious breach of not only Minnesota Election Law, but the public trust in our electoral system,” the lawsuit said.
Democratic Rep. Brad Tabke was declared the winner last week of the swing suburban Shakopee-area District 54A race by 14 votes after a recount and the official canvass. But Scott County election officials had said earlier, after a post-election audit, that they were unable to account for 21 absentee ballots in the district southwest of Minneapolis.
County Attorney Ronald Hocevar reported last Wednesday that his preliminary investigation determined that election workers most likely threw at least 20 of those absentee ballots away, and that they may have been in a paper bale that a recycler had already sent away for shredding. He wrote that they “most likely will not be recovered,” and that even if they were found, it's unlikely that an unbroken chain of custody could be proven to assure that they weren't tampered with.
In Minnesota, absentee voters complete their ballots, place them in a security envelope to protect their privacy, then place that envelope inside a signature envelope with identifying information on the outside so that election workers can check those ballots in. Once the counting begins, the ballots are supposed to be removed from the security envelopes and tabulated.
The county attorney concluded that the 20 ballots, all from the same precinct, were properly accepted for counting on Oct. 17, but “most likely were never removed from their secrecy envelopes,” and were probably still in them when those envelopes were thrown away. The investigation didn’t determine what happened to the 21st ballot, which was cast in a different precinct.
It’s not the first time in recent years that absentee ballots have gone missing.
When a small number of military ballots in Pennsylvania ended up in a trash can in 2020, President Donald Trump repeatedly seized on the case to support his claims of fraud heading into that election. After investigating, authorities found a temporary county election worker had mistakenly discarded seven military ballots in the trash and mishandled two others. The ballots were later retrieved from a garbage dumpster and counted, and the worker was fired.
Minnesota House Republicans filed Monday's lawsuit on behalf of GOP candidate Aaron Paul, asking a court to declare the results invalid and Tabke's seat vacant, saying the “undisputed facts” make it impossible to rely on the results.
The current House minority leader, Rep. Lisa Demuth, of Cold Spring, said a new election is the best way to protect the integrity of the process.
"We appreciate the efforts by Scott County to investigate this matter and be transparent about their findings,” Demuth said in a statement.
But House Democrats said they believe they will win the court challenge.
“Rep. Brad Tabke won the election in District 54A by the count on Election Night and in the recount," current Speaker Melissa Hortman, of Brooklyn Park, said in a statement. "We expect Rep. Tabke will prevail again in the election contest.”
Republicans also filed a lawsuit last month over a different House race, in the suburban Roseville area, where they allege the winner doesn't live in the district. Democrats deny that, and the district is heavily Democratic, so that case is unlikely to change the balance of power even if there's a special election.
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Associated Press writer Christina Almeida Cassidy contributed to this story from Atlanta.
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This story has been corrected to show the GOP House majority would be two votes, not one, if its candidate wins a special election, not .