Minnesota Supreme Court Kills Lindell Recount: He Asked for Wrong Legal Remedy

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Saturday rejected MyPillow founder Mike Lindell’s bid to force a sweeping recount of the Republican gubernatorial primary — not just because he missed the filing deadline or refused to pay, but because the court found he was asking for the wrong legal tool to begin with. Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson’s six-page ruling, issued August 29, 2026, makes explicit what Lindell’s months of escalating claims obscured: a manual recount verifies that the math was counted correctly; it cannot investigate fraud, anomalies, or whether electronic tabulators were manipulated. That determination — under Minnesota law — belongs in an entirely different legal proceeding called an election contest. Lindell never filed one.

The ruling locks in House Speaker Lisa Demuth as the certified Republican nominee for governor. She will face Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar — who won her party’s gubernatorial primary on August 11 with 89.1 percent of the vote — in the November 3 general election, with ballot printing scheduled to begin September 3 and early voting set to open September 18 per the election calendar.

Demuth’s Margin and What Lindell Claimed

Demuth defeated Lindell by 45,401 votes in the August 11 primary — 179,683 to 134,282, a gap of roughly 11 percentage points in a seven-candidate Republican field.

Lindell did not concede on primary night. A week later, he publicly alleged his team had found irregularities in the election data: vote totals he said moved backward during live reporting, counties appearing to report more votes than were cast, and what he described as “unusual synchronized vote totals across all seven Republican candidates.” He attributed all of these to the use of electronic voting machines, despite the fact that Minnesota does not use what are commonly called electronic voting machines — the state uses hand-marked paper ballots counted by optical scan tabulators that are barred by law from connecting to any internet network on election day.

The anomalies Lindell cited are consistent with known behaviors in live election-night reporting: when a county corrects a data-entry error during results transmission, previously reported totals can drop before recovering — a routine artifact of real-time aggregation, not evidence of vote-switching.

“Even if this recount and audit does not overturn my election for governor of Minnesota,” Lindell said, “I believe this is the gateway to getting rid of these electronic voting machines.” He made that statement in a phone call with NBC News on August 19.

No independent verification or official finding of any irregularity has been reported.

What Recounts Can and Cannot Do — and Why It Mattered Here

Minnesota law recognizes two distinct mechanisms for challenging an election result, and they serve fundamentally different purposes.

A recount is a re-tabulation: it asks whether the votes were counted correctly under a defined procedure. It produces a new official total. Minnesota’s automatic recount threshold is 0.25 percent of total votes cast; for races outside that margin, the losing candidate can request a discretionary recount at personal expense. That recount, by statute, confirms or corrects the math — nothing more. More detail on Minnesota’s specific recount rules is available from Ballotpedia.

An election contest is a legal challenge to the validity of results: it can allege “an irregularity in the conduct of an election or canvass of votes” or “deliberate, serious, and material violations of the Minnesota Election Law.” Famous precedent: when Republican Norm Coleman lost his 2008 Senate recount to Al Franken by 312 votes, Coleman filed an election contest — a separate legal action — which widened his margin of defeat and ultimately confirmed Franken as the winner.

Lindell filed for a recount. His legal arguments, however, were about anomalies, fraud, and machine manipulation — claims that fall squarely within the election contest category, not the recount category. Chief Justice Hudson addressed this directly: “Lindell’s focus on alleged anomalies confuses the purpose of a manual recount with an election contest.”

That is not a minor procedural footnote. It is the structural reason the court rejected his petition: he was using a tool designed to verify arithmetic to demand an investigation into alleged fraud. Minnesota law provides a mechanism for the latter — but Lindell did not pursue it.

Missed Deadline and the Lawsuit That Followed

In a letter dated August 19, 2026, Secretary of State General Counsel Lauren Bethke informed Lindell that a full hand recount of the Republican gubernatorial primary would cost approximately $825,000. Under state law, the payment and formal recount request had to be filed by Monday, August 24, 2026.

Lindell initially committed to paying. His campaign said the $825,000 was “primed and ready.” But he did not submit the payment by the deadline.

His stated reason: the State Canvassing Board, which approved the contingent recount plan on August 18, had narrowed the scope in a way Lindell found unacceptable. The approved plan would sort all ballots by party primary, then divide Republican ballots into three piles — one for Lindell, one for Demuth, one for all remaining candidates in the seven-person field. Lindell wanted a recount covering every candidate in both the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial primaries. The board’s timeline and recount plan structure had been provided to the Lindell campaign the same day it was approved.

Spokesperson Cassondra Knudson of the Secretary of State’s Office responded that the plan follows state law and administrative rules on recount procedures, “and is consistent with plans of its kind for the past two decades.”

Instead of paying, Lindell on August 25 filed suit against Secretary of State Steve Simon and the State Canvassing Board, alleging a “bait-and-switch” and seeking a court order compelling a broader examination of all ballots in both primaries. State attorneys, in a filing on August 27, warned that granting Lindell’s request risked colliding with ballot printing deadlines: ballot printing was scheduled to begin September 3 ahead of early voting starting September 18, and a court-ordered expansion of the recount’s scope would require new procedures and cost estimates that could delay that timeline.

What the Ruling Said

Hudson, writing for the court, upheld the approved recount plan. She confirmed that sorting Republican ballots into three piles — Lindell, Demuth, and others — fully met the state’s statutory requirements: “After all votes are sorted and counted, Lindell would know whether he is the winner over Demuth,” Hudson wrote, adding that all ballots would be counted and subject to challenge.

She also disposed of Lindell’s argument that he was entitled to a recount covering both parties’ primaries: under Minnesota law, a recount of the office Lindell sought — Republican nominee for governor — does not require a simultaneous recount of the Democratic primary for the same office.

The ruling did not address whether Lindell’s anomaly claims have merit. That question — a matter for an election contest, not a recount — was outside the court’s scope in this proceeding.

With the petition denied and the August 24 statutory deadline for initiating a recount having already passed, no recount of the Republican gubernatorial primary is expected to take place.

Lindell’s Defamation Liabilities and the Pattern Behind the Claims

The recount effort does not exist in isolation. Lindell has spent years promoting claims that electronic voting machines stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump — claims that have been rejected in court after court.

In June 2025, a Colorado jury found that Lindell defamed Eric Coomer, a former executive at Dominion Voting Systems, awarding Coomer $2.3 million in damages. Separately, federal Judge Carl Nichols — a Trump appointee — found that Lindell defamed Smartmatic and ordered sanctions of $56,369. When Lindell refused to pay, Nichols held him in civil contempt and added a $500 daily fine starting April 7, 2026. By late July 2026, those daily fines had exceeded the original sanction amount. The company formerly known as Dominion — now operating as Liberty Vote after an October 2025 acquisition by former Republican elections director Scott Leiendecker — separately settled its $1.3 billion defamation suit against Lindell in June 2026 on confidential terms.

Lindell has said in court filings that he lacks the financial means to pay the Smartmatic sanctions, even while his campaign spent $187,000 on his own books and other legal proceedings.

What Comes Next

Lindell told NBC News by phone Saturday evening that he intends to appeal Hudson’s ruling to the United States Supreme Court early next week and is separately filing public-records requests for election data from all 87 Minnesota counties to pursue an independent investigation. He confirmed those plans to NBC and KSTP.

No SCOTUS filing was confirmed as of publication. Legal experts and analysts broadly regard Supreme Court intervention in a state primary dispute — where no federal constitutional issue has been established — as highly unlikely.

Trump endorsed Lindell on July 15, 2026, describing Lindell’s years of election-integrity advocacy as a sacrifice for the country. That endorsement proved insufficient to overcome Demuth’s 11-point margin.

Demuth vs. Klobuchar: A Tech-Policy General Election

The certified matchup — Demuth versus Klobuchar — carries particular relevance for technology policy. Klobuchar, in her role as Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Privacy Subcommittee, has been one of the Senate’s most active voices on AI governance and election technology. In July 2025, she reintroduced the bipartisan Preparing Election Administrators for AI Act — legislation that would require the Election Assistance Commission to develop voluntary guidelines for election offices specifically addressing AI use in election administration, cybersecurity, and the spread of election-related disinformation. The bill was reintroduced with Senators Susan Collins and Mark Kelly as co-sponsors. She has also written publicly in opposition to federal preemption of state AI safety laws.

The general election outcome — rated as Likely Democratic by most political forecasters — will determine who governs a state that uses the optical-scan tabulation systems at the center of the 2026 primary dispute, and whether the next governor’s posture on election technology aligns with Klobuchar’s AI-governance record or a more skeptical view of digital systems.

Demuth, who served on the Minnesota Legislature’s Technology Advisory Council, has not articulated a specific technology policy platform for the governor’s race comparable to Klobuchar’s Senate record.

How Minnesota’s Paper-Based System Works

Lindell’s claims center on “electronic voting machines,” but that phrase does not accurately describe what Minnesota uses. All Minnesota voters mark hand-marked paper ballots — the paper is the authoritative legal record. Ballots are counted by optical scan tabulators: devices that read filled-in ovals and tabulate totals. These machines are certified by federal labs accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and tested by local election officials before every election through mandatory public accuracy tests. On election day, they are legally prohibited from connecting to any electronic network or the internet.

After each general election, Minnesota counties conduct mandatory post-election audits in which randomly selected precincts have their ballots hand-counted and compared against tabulator results. This paper trail means any discrepancy between machine counts and hand counts can be independently verified — exactly the type of verification a manual recount would provide.

There have been no official findings of fraud or irregularity in the 2026 Minnesota primary results.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why didn’t the court just order a recount so Lindell could see whether there was fraud?

Because a recount is not a fraud investigation — it is a vote-verification procedure. Under Minnesota law, a manual recount asks only whether the ballots were counted correctly the first time. Chief Justice Hudson’s ruling specifically stated that Lindell’s focus on alleged anomalies “confuses the purpose of a manual recount with an election contest.” To investigate fraud or irregularities, a losing candidate must file a separate legal action called an election contest, which can examine claims of irregularity in the conduct of the election. Lindell’s lawsuit did not do that, and the court found no legal basis to order a fraud investigation through a recount proceeding.

Can Lindell actually appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court?

Lindell has said he intends to appeal, but legal experts regard the prospect as highly unlikely to succeed. The U.S. Supreme Court generally has no jurisdiction over a state primary recount dispute unless a federal constitutional right is at stake. Lindell has not articulated what federal constitutional issue his case raises; a petition without a recognized federal question would be dismissed before briefing. No SCOTUS filing was confirmed as of publication.

Does this outcome affect who wins the general election for Minnesota governor?

No — the ruling certifies what the primary result already determined. Lisa Demuth won the Republican primary and is the GOP’s nominee. She will face Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who won the Democratic gubernatorial primary, in the November 3 general election. The outcome of the recount dispute has no bearing on general election eligibility or ballot access for either candidate. The general election is the voters’ next opportunity to weigh in.

What is Amy Klobuchar’s position on AI and election technology?

Klobuchar has been one of the Senate’s most active legislators on both fronts. As Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, she held hearings in 2025 on AI deepfakes and online data privacy. She reintroduced the bipartisan Preparing Election Administrators for AI Act in July 2025, which would require the Election Assistance Commission to develop guidelines for election offices on how to handle AI in election administration, cybersecurity, and disinformation. She has also publicly opposed federal efforts to preempt state AI safety laws. If elected governor, her approach to state-level election technology governance would reflect that record.

Originally published on Tech Times