The Minnesota Supreme Court on Saturday rejected Mike Lindell’s bid to force a full recount of his Aug. 11 loss to Lisa Demuth in the Minnesota GOP gubernatorial primary, ending his latest push to reopen the race. Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson wrote that the state’s recount plan complied with law and that the Minnesota secretary of state’s office and its State Canvassing Board were “not committing any wrongful act, omission, or error.”
The ruling matters because Lindell had tried to turn a limited recount into a broader search for problems in the vote. He lost by 45,000 votes, a margin that leaves little room for a simple do-over to change the result, but he has insisted that only a full hand recount could settle what happened. On Saturday, the court said the plan already in place was the lawful one.
Hudson’s six-page ruling said the ballots would first be sorted by whether they were cast in the Democratic or Republican primary, then the Republican ballots would be divided into three piles: one for Lindell, one for Demuth and one for every other candidate. All ballots in all piles would be counted and subject to challenge. In Hudson’s view, that meant Lindell would know whether he was ahead of Demuth after every vote had been sorted and counted.
The state’s position was that the contingent recount plan had already been laid out after the State Canvassing Board approved it on Aug. 18. Lindell said he did not realize the recount would be limited to ballots cast for him or Demuth and refused to pay the estimated $825,000 he had previously pledged for a full hand recount and audit. He then sued the Minnesota secretary of state’s office and its State Canvassing Board on Monday, saying he wanted something broader and was willing to pay even more money if needed.
That is where the fight sharpened. Lindell said the recount should be used to look for anomalies tied to electronic voting machines, but Hudson said that argument mixes up a manual recount with an election contest. The court rejected the idea that a recount can be used as a fishing expedition for irregularities, even as Lindell argued that was the whole point of his request.
Lindell’s challenge also sits inside a longer pattern. Before his own gubernatorial campaign, he faced multiple lawsuits after repeating debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged by voting machines. On Saturday, he said he planned to take the Minnesota ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
For now, the result stands. Demuth’s win remains intact, the recount stays limited, and Lindell’s broader demand for a full hand review has been turned aside unless a higher court intervenes.
