Red Lake has a knack for mattering in recount-tight races

There’s nothing new about the northern Minnesota reservation getting attention during tight election contests. As reported here last month, the director of President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign is fond of recalling how he had to talk down hard-charging colleagues who wanted to recount what they thought were suspicious votes there (by “dead Indians”) in hopes of netting the Gipper a full 50-state sweep. And Red Lake has had experience with close races and calls for recounts in tribal government elections as recently as 2006.

The area has found a way to play a leading role even in the preliminaries to this week’s recount in the U.S. Senate election. Last week the Franken campaign put forward what turned out to be mostly a rural legend about an elderly woman whose absentee ballot was rejected because after she had a stroke, her signature no longer matched the one on file. Even as it emerged that this wasn’t the case, the woman was never identified publicly — except that she lives in Beltrami County, where most of the Red Lake reservation lies.