Local election officials are hard at work getting ready for the recount.
The timeline for this year's recount is shorter than that for the 2008 U.S. Senate race recount between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman. Every county in the state will start the recount on the same day. In 2008, the start times were staggered.
Pam Fuller, elections administrator for Olmsted County, said the recount will involve reviewing 55,631 ballots cast in the county. The county expects to have 13 counting tables with trained elections staff members going through the ballots and a representative from each political party watching.
Space will be available for the public to watch the recount, which starts at 9 a.m. Nov. 29 in the Mayo Civic Center ballroom. Fuller said she expects that they will get the recount done in one day. During the 2008 U.S. Senate recount, she said, they managed to do it in one day even though they had 20,000 more ballots.
She added, "We want to get it done in one day, otherwise we have to transport the ballots back to our office, lock them up and start over the next day, and we'd rather not do that."
