Court rejects Mike Lindell's recount request for primary in Minnesota governor's race

Minnesota's highest court on Saturday denied Mike Lindell's request for a recount in the Aug. 11 Republican primary for governor after the MyPillow founder said he would personally pay for a hand recount and audit of every paper ballot cast in the race.

Lindell finished second to Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth in the race. A week after the primary, Lindell announced he would pay an estimated $825,000 for the recount. However, as the deadline to submit the request loomed, Lindell said he would be withholding the payment, claiming that the Secretary of State's office has proposed an unlawful recount process.

Lindell's campaign said the $825,000 payment was "primed and ready to cover the costs" but had not been submitted because of a dispute over the planned scope of the recount. The campaign said state officials intend to recount only the votes cast for Lindell and Demuth and not all the votes cast in the Republican gubernatorial primary, while excluding votes for other candidates in the race.

His campaign argued that the scope of the recount violates Minnesota law, citing a provision that defines a recount as determining "the number of votes validly cast for the office or question to be recounted." Lindell asked the state to waive the payment deadline until a court could rule on the parameters of the recount proposed by election officials.

The Minnesota Supreme Court found Lindell's claims were without merit and said the state-approved recount plan was within the law.

"Lindell argues that he is entitled to a full recount for both the Democratic and Republican primary races for governor 'to ensure that there are no anomalies in the ballots, whether the votes cast are for the Democratic or Republican primaries,' and that this recount must include 'the recording of votes for every candidate.' But Lindell's focus on alleged anomalies confuses the purpose of a manual recount with an election contest," Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson wrote in the six-page ruling.

WCCO has reached out to Mike Lindell's team for comment about the decision.

Hudson's ruling affirms Demuth's victory in the GOP primary over Lindell, and she will now go on to face DFL nominee Amy Klobuchar in the November general election. 

According to state election officials, 179,683 people voted for Demuth in the primary, while 134,282 voters cast a ballot for Lindell.

The Secretary of State's office released a contingency plan spelling out exactly how a statewide hand recount would be run. According to those documents, Paul Linnell, the office's Director of Elections, would serve as State Recount Official, with authority to appoint deputy and assistant deputy officials to oversee counting at sites across the state. Under the plan, the recount would be open to the public and media. 

There have been no official findings of fraud or irregularity in the Minnesota primary results. Nonetheless, on primary night, Lindell told reporters he would not concede until every vote was counted and that his team had spotted "anomalies" it needed time to review, though he offered no evidence at the time.

Lindell became a national figure after the 2020 election by promoting unproven claims that voting-machine companies had manipulated results for President Trump. Those claims led to costly legal fallout: Lindell settled a defamation suit with Dominion Voting Systems last month, and a judge separately found he had defamed Smartmatic, another voting-technology company, though damages in that case have not yet been determined.