GOP's Mills to seek recount after narrowly losing northeastern Minnesota congressional race

Republican Stewart Mills said Monday he would request — and pay for — a hand recount of votes in the congressional race he narrowly lost to DFL U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan.

"We just want to make sure that every vote gets counted, and counted correctly," Mills said in an interview. "We're prepared to accept whatever is the genuine will of the voters, but we would be negligent not to seek this recount."

Nolan, the incumbent, beat Mills by 2,009 votes of a total of 356,971 cast in northeastern Minnesota's Eighth Congressional District. That margin, a little more than one-half a percent, is too large to trigger an automatic, state-funded recount.

But state law allows Mills to request a hand recount as long as he pays for it himself. He said the margin is small enough to merit a recount, especially since Nolan outperformed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the district. Republican President-elect Donald Trump won the Eighth District, and Nolan got nearly 40,000 more votes than Clinton.

"We're not alleging voter fraud, we're not saying anyone got the numbers wrong, but there's enough questions that need to be answered that can only be answered by a hand recount," Mills said.

http://www.startribune.com/gop-s-mills-to-seek-recount-after-narrowly-losing-northeastern-minnesota-congressional-race/403480196/