Special election ballots by the numbers

Although the special election for the District 11 State Senate seat is over and Republican Jason Rarick was declared the winner on Feb. 5, mail-in ballots are still coming into the courthouse.

County auditor Paul Gassert said he has received a total of 144 late mail-in ballots since election day, and those ballots won’t be opened or counted. The number of ballots coming in the mail has slowed to a trickle, he added, noting that they received only five on Tuesday.

It was an improvement over the primary election on Jan. 22 which may now lead to state legislative changes in the timeline for special elections. Gassert said the latest count for late mail-in ballots for the primary election is 413 total for Carlton County.

That means the total number of late, uncounted mail-in primary ballots was just 54 ballots fewer than the 467 mail-in and absentee ballots that actually counted in Carlton County for the District 11 primary election. A grand total of 2,298 votes was cast in the primary in Carlton County, and a total of 4,389 across the entire district, which includes all of Carlton and Pine Counties and a few precincts in St. Louis and Kanabec Counties. The two DFL candidates were separated by only 233 votes in the only contested race in the primary.

A total of 15,623 votes were counted in the District 11 special election on Feb. 5.