The Minnesota Supreme Court on Saturday, Aug. 29, denied Mike Lindell’s petition seeking a court-ordered recount of the Republican primary for governor, ruling that the state’s recount plan complies with Minnesota law and that the Secretary of State’s Office and State Canvassing Board committed no “wrongful act, omission, or error” in setting its scope.
Lindell finished second to Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth in the Aug. 11 primary, trailing by roughly 45,000 votes — Demuth received 179,683 votes to Lindell’s 134,282, according to results posted by the Secretary of State’s Office. Lindell did not concede on primary night, citing what he described as anomalies in the vote count, though he offered no supporting documentation at the time.
How the dispute unfolded
President Donald Trump endorsed Lindell on July 15, giving him a boost in what had been viewed as a competitive three-way primary against Demuth and Kendall Qualls, a retired healthcare executive who had the state party’s convention endorsement. Demuth won the primary regardless, and Qualls conceded on primary night; Lindell did not.
Minnesota law allows a losing primary candidate to request a discretionary recount at their own expense when the margin exceeds the threshold for a state-funded recount. Lindell said he would personally fund a full hand recount and audit, and his campaign said an $825,000 payment — the state’s cost estimate — was “primed and ready.”
The State Canvassing Board approved a contingent recount plan on Aug. 18 and, according to the Secretary of State’s Office, provided it to the Lindell campaign the same day. The plan would have tallied ballots in three categories: votes for Lindell, votes for Demuth, and all other ballots grouped together rather than broken out by candidate. The board certified Demuth’s win on Aug. 19.
“Lindell’s focus on alleged anomalies confuses the purpose of a manual recount with an election contest.”
Lindell’s campaign disputed that structure, arguing it violated a state law defining a recount as a determination of “the number of votes validly cast for the office or question to be recounted.” Lindell also sought a recount that included ballots cast in the Democratic primary, since the two parties’ primary contests appeared on the same ballot form, and argued the recount should cover all seven Republican candidates rather than only the top two finishers.
By the Monday, Aug. 24 deadline to formally request a discretionary recount and submit payment, Lindell had done neither. Instead, his campaign said it was withholding the $825,000 and filed suit at the Minnesota Supreme Court against Secretary of State Steve Simon and the State Canvassing Board, seeking a temporary restraining order and asking the court to order a full recount on Lindell’s terms. Simon, a Democrat, chairs the canvassing board.
A spokesperson for Simon’s office, Cassondra Knudson, said the recount plan followed state law and administrative rules and was “consistent with plans of its kind for the past two decades,” and that the office had not received a formal recount request or payment by the deadline. The office said at the time it did not plan to conduct a recount of the Aug. 11 primary absent court intervention.
In a Wednesday, Aug. 27 filing, attorneys for the Secretary of State’s Office and the Canvassing Board asked the court to dismiss Lindell’s petition, arguing that granting his request risked colliding with the general-election calendar. The filing said ballot printing was set to begin Sept. 3 ahead of early voting starting Sept. 18, and that a court-ordered expansion of the recount’s scope would require new procedures and cost estimates that could delay that timeline. “Lindell’s petition threatens to delay the ballot printing process to the degree that counties may not be able to begin absentee voting by the legally required deadline,” state attorneys wrote.
The court’s ruling
Writing for the court in a six-page order, Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson rejected Lindell’s central argument that he was entitled to a recount covering every candidate in both the Republican and Democratic primaries “to ensure that there are no anomalies in the ballots.” Hudson wrote that “Lindell’s focus on alleged anomalies confuses the purpose of a manual recount with an election contest” — a distinction in Minnesota law between a recount, which verifies vote totals under a fixed procedure, and an election contest, a separate legal process for challenging results based on alleged irregularities.
Hudson upheld the recount plan the Canvassing Board approved Aug. 18, under which ballots would first be separated by party primary and then the Republican ballots sorted into three piles: one each for Lindell and Demuth, and a third for all other candidates. “In other words, after all votes are sorted and counted, Lindell would know whether he is the winner over Demuth,” Hudson wrote, adding that “all ballots, in all piles, would be counted and subject to challenge.”
“After all votes are sorted and counted, Lindell would know whether he is the winner over Demuth.”
Lindell told NBC News by phone Saturday evening that he intends to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court and said his team is separately requesting election data from all 87 Minnesota counties under the state’s public records law to pursue what he called an independent investigation. “I’m willing to pay even more money. I don’t care what it costs,” he said.
“I’m willing to pay even more money. I don’t care what it costs.”
With the petition denied and the statutory recount-request deadline already passed, no recount of the Republican primary for governor is expected to proceed. Demuth is set to face Democratic nominee Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who won her party’s primary by a wide margin, in the November general election.
Lindell has been a prominent promoter of unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was affected by fraud involving voting machines, claims that have been rejected in numerous courts. There have been no official findings of fraud or irregularity in the 2026 Minnesota primary results.
The ruling leaves Demuth’s certified primary victory intact as Minnesota moves toward ballot printing and September early voting.
Ahead
- Possible U.S. Supreme Court appeal. Lindell has said he intends to appeal Hudson’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court; no filing has been confirmed as of publication.
- Public-records request. Lindell’s team has said it is seeking primary election data from all 87 Minnesota counties; the outcome and any findings are unconfirmed.
- General election calendar. Ballot printing was expected to begin Sept. 3, with early voting beginning Sept. 18, per the state’s Aug. 27 court filing.
Sourcing and methodology
This article’s account of the Minnesota Supreme Court’s Aug. 29 denial of Lindell’s petition, including the substance of Chief Justice Hudson’s order and Lindell’s stated plan to appeal, is sourced to NBC News reporting, which quotes directly from the six-page order and from a phone interview with Lindell. MPR News’s headline and published summary independently confirm the outcome. Election Desk was unable to retrieve the court’s order directly from the Minnesota Judicial Branch case-search system at time of publication; the order should be verified against the docket (case type: original jurisdiction petition, Minnesota Supreme Court) when it becomes available, and quoted language here should be checked against the primary document in a future update.
Background on the recount dispute — vote totals, the recount-plan structure, the Aug. 24 deadline, the state’s Aug. 27 dismissal filing, and Trump’s July 15 endorsement — is drawn from contemporaneous reporting by the Star Tribune, NBC News, NOTUS, The Hill, CBS News Minnesota, FOX 9, MPR News, the Minnesota Reformer, and the Albert Lea Tribune (republishing MPR News wire content), which are substantially consistent on these facts. Vote totals (Demuth 179,683; Lindell 134,282) are attributed to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office and are consistently reported across outlets. Quotations attributed to Secretary of State spokesperson Cassondra Knudson and to the state’s Aug. 27 court filing are drawn from direct reporting citing those sources.
Lindell’s claims of “anomalies” in the primary vote count are reported as claims made by Lindell and his campaign; no independent verification or official finding of irregularity has been reported, and this is noted explicitly above rather than implied by omission.
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