The MNGOP came so close to having everything. They control both houses of the legislature, and they came about 9,000 votes away from holding the governorship as well. But, unfortunately for them and fortunately for the state of Minnesota, they’ll have to deal with Mark Dayton’s veto pen.

That’s why they have a new plan: Drag out the recount for months, keep Tim Pawlenty in office, and pass as many bills as they can for him to sign. They want to overturn the will of the people, who voted for Mark Dayton.

Let’s be completely clear — this is a very different situation than we had in 2008. Mark Dayton doesn’t lead by a few hundred votes, he leads by 9,000. That’s almost 30 times greater than Coleman’s lead. The chance of Emmer being declared the winner in the recount is infinitesimally small, and the recount process should be much simpler this time.

But don’t worry, the Republicans have a plan to complicate things. Their plan is to savage our electoral system, call everybody a cheat and a liar, and do their utmost to make sure Minnesotans never trust another election again. Just imagine that — a party that’s willing to tear down the entire electoral system and destroy voters’ confidence in our very democracy, just so they can gain a three-month window of opportunity. As an election judge, I am furious with the Republicans’ efforts to tear down our electoral system.

I saw firsthand on Tuesday how smoothly our electoral process works. Every variable in the election must be checked and double-checked. Seals are verified, the number of ballots cast must be reconciled with the number of voters signed in, and sensitive numbers must be verified by election judges of opposite parties.

But Tony Sutton, the chair of the Republican Party, doesn’t care about any of that. He wants to create doubt, and he’s willing to denigrate my work, the work of thousands of other election judges, and the work of Minnesota’s election officials. He is disgusting, to put it mildly.

Sutton’s first angle of attack was against Hennepin County’s unofficial results, which were erroneously reported for a few hours.

Hennepin County elections manager Rachel Smith said there was nothing fishy about what happened: About 10 p.m. Tuesday, staffers in her Government Center offices were seeking to update the county’s precinct returns for the Secretary of State’s website. A staff person transmitting a large file of returns, she said, mistakenly hit “Add” rather than “Replace.”

These were not official results, and the official results were never impacted by the erroneous reporting. This didn’t affect anything — and never would have affected anything — beyond TV reporting. And it was the county itself which fixed the problem.

Once again, Sutton doesn’t care. The error never affected the official results, and the fixed results made things better, not worse, for Tom Emmer. But that won’t stop Sutton from trying to convince you that your vote doesn’t count.

In another ridiculous claim, Sutton claimed that Emmer should have won because the GOP candidates won in the legislative races. By that logic, Mike Hatch should have won in 2006. Mr. Sutton may find it difficult to believe that voters are actually capable of thinking for themselves and voting across party lines. He might want to consider, for example, the solid victories of DFLers Mark Ritchie, Rebecca Otto, and Lori Swanson.

You can expect this sort of garbage to continue. Mr. Sutton will need to sow a lot of doubt if he’s going to keep Mark Dayton out of the office and let the Republicans run wild. I’ll be right here to disprove every lie and misleading statement by Sutton and his cronies.