By Charlie Warner
Argus News Editor
Houston County Auditor Char Meiners felt the first general election she
was in charge of went well. “It was a good election,” she said. “I was
thrilled to be home by midnight.”
It had been a long day for Meiners, who has worked in the auditor’s
office for the past 30 years. Although she had been part of many
elections, this one was “her baby.” She was appointed interim auditor
when long-time County Auditor Pete Johnson retired in May.
Meiners’ sleep was interrupted around 2:30 a.m. Her phone was ringing,
and when she picked it up, she noticed she had missed five calls.
“It was the sheriff’s office. I was told a representative from Sen.
Norm Coleman’s office was in Caledonia, demanding I come back to the
courthouse, show him where the votes were stored, and prove that they
were secure. I had just put in a 17-hour day. The bags and boxes of
ballots were all sealed and in a locked room. They were secure. I told
him if he wanted to see where we kept the ballots, he could meet me at
the court house in the morning,” Meiners recalled.
Meiners met with Coleman’s representative that morning and showed him
that all the ballots were indeed sealed shut with a number, and that
those numbers were recorded. The ballots were locked in a basement room
in the inner bowls of the court house.
Because the race for the U.S. Senate seat between Coleman and
challenger Al Franken was so close, paranoia had set in, and the
Coleman camp wanted to make sure no voter fraud was taking place in
Houston County or the other 86 counties throughout the state.
“After he saw where we kept the ballots, and checked to make sure none
of the seals had been broken, he claimed the law stated he could
physically be in the room, guarding the ballots. I told him if he was
in that storage room with those ballots, I’d have to be in there too.
And I didn’t have time for that.”
The concerned member of Coleman’s team decided being stationed outside
the locked door in the dingy hallway of the 125-year-old courthouse was
a viable option. At first a request was made to remain there 24 hours a
day. But when it was explained that the courthouse is locked at 5 p.m.
each day, and everyone was out of the court house, including the
“ballot guards,” they complied.
A representative of the Coleman camp guarded the door for several days,
and then decided Houston County’s ballots were safe, told Meiners, “I
don’t know why we are here,” and left.
Since the Nov. 4 general election, Meiners’ office has been inundated
with phone calls, faxes, and emails from Coleman and Franken’s camps,
as well as from the Secretary of State’s office.
“Attorneys from both candidates wanted to know how many ballots were
rejected. They wanted to know the names and address on those rejected
ballots,” Meiners went on. “I checked with the county attorney's office and was told we could provide the
names, but not the addresses. Out of 933 absentee ballots, we only had
15 that were rejected by our election judges.”
Houston County had 10,953 ballots accepted in the 2008 election, which
is 88.59 percent of the registered voters. Four years ago the
county-wide percentage was even higher at 93 percent.
The Coleman-Franken race is far from over. The Secretary of State’s
office held a series of web training sessions last Thursday,
instructing the 87 county auditors across the state on the proper way
to conduct the state-wide recount, which will take place Nov. 19.
Houston County will have five staffers and five election judges divided
into five two-person teams that will recount all 10,953 ballots. A
representative from each candidate can be present watching as each
ballot is reviewed, and Meiners anticipates there will be.
“I’m hoping this will only take about four hours,” Meiners said. “When
we had to conduct a recount in the primary election for the one State
Supreme Court judge race in September, that only took a half hour. But
we didn’t have nearly as many voters in the primary.”
This isn’t the first year Meiners has been involved in recounts,
although the two previous ones were handled by the Secretary of State’s
office. The first was in the 1980s when representatives from the
Secretary of State’s office conducted a recount for a close State
Senate race.
The second was two years ago when the House District 31-B close race
between Ken Tschumper and Greg Davids required a recount. In that case,
two deputies transported all the ballots to St. Paul where they were
recounted.
The state will be re-imbursing each county three cents per vote, which
will cost the state approximately $90,000. If the recount takes around
four hours, as Meiners predicts, it will cost the county about $100
more than the $328.59 Houston County will receive from the state.
“The strange thing is, before this all came about with Coleman’s office
raising concerns about ballot security issues, I doubt if five people
in the court house knew where we stored the ballots. Now everyone
does,” Meiners concluded.
You can contact Charlie Warner at
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