DFLer Mark Dayton’s recount team is reporting this morning that he now holds a lead of about 9,031 votes, somewhat more than the 8,770 margin he held after the post-election statewide canvass.
Dayton has picked up a net 261 votes, according to his campaign; in the hand recount, Dayton has picked up 390 votes to Republican Tom Emmer’s 129 votes.
Dayton’s spokesperson Denise Cardinal emphasized her campaign’s numbers are “preliminary,” but the Dayton side is using the same tracking methods that Al Franken’s campaign used in 2008, and they proved to be right on when the recount ended.
Rep. Emmer’s legal team isn’t releasing any data on what it knows about how the recount is going. With 84 percent of the votes counted, the secretary of state’s site has Dayton ahead by 7,360 votes; the official scoreboard doesn’t include how judges at tables across the state have allocated challenged ballots.
Only five of the state’s 87 counties are still counting: Anoka, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis.
As for challenges, the Dayton team reports 2,586 frivolous challenges by Emmer’s side, with 1,839 coming in Hennepin County; Dayton’s team has exercised 18 frivolous challenges.
The official secretary of state website is reporting 842 valid ballot challenges statewide, with 679 from Emmer and 163 from Dayton.
In a lighter vein, if the semi-colon in that second to the last paragraph is correctly used the Dayton camp really ought to be embarrassed about those eighteen self reported frivolous challenges.