As ballot guru, this Joe is not ordinary

If there's a mantra at the state's busiest U.S. Senate recount site, it goes like this: "Hey, Joe, they need you over there ..."

Moving among eight ballot-tallying tables, Ramsey County Elections Manager Joe Mansky finds himself in the recount vortex.

One minute, his face is turning red as he suggests that campaign lawyers sue him if they don't like the call he's making. The next, he's cracking jokes that get the rival camps chuckling.

With a state-high 278,000 ballots to recount at a single site, Mansky has moved from administrative obscurity to become one of the most recognized faces and authorities of this historic overtime race.

For the first couple of days, his experience and wisdom appeared to be just the tonic to alleviate the recount's biggest looming headache: thousands of challenged ballots.

After his team thumbed through 80,000 ballots on Days 1 and 2 of the recount, Mansky called late-afternoon summit meetings. Sitting down with lawyers and volunteers for Sen. Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken, Mansky would pull out the day's challenged ballots. He'd point out that there was no chance a stray pen scribble or an out-of-the-oval mark was going to alter a vote when the state Canvassing Board meets next month to determine the voters' intent.

Arbiter role cut short

Both sides would shrug and agree to waive most of their challenges. Ramsey County averaged only five challenges the first two days before the Ramsey County Attorney's office halted the meetings, opining that Mansky should be an overseer, not an arbiter. Since then, the challenges in Ramsey County have increased more than tenfold.

"Frankly, I was trying to do them a favor," Mansky said. "Some minor mitigation now can help reduce the workload on the other end."

He should know. As a top-level election administrator at the Secretary of State's office from 1984 to 1999, Mansky went before the Canvassing Board some 30 times. His personal formula, that roughly two in every 1,000 scanned ballots don't get counted by the voting machines, has become quoted as doctrine this month. Gov. Jesse Ventura even tapped Mansky in 2001 to manage legislative redistricting duties.

"Both parties think Joe is 10 feet tall," said Rob Smith, a Coleman volunteer who took part in Mansky's challenged-ballot talks. "He doesn't try to change minds, he simply gives guidance on what will stand and educates us all."

The oldest son of a pharmacist on Chicago's South Side, Mansky didn't grow up dreaming of becoming an elections guru. In fact, he studied hydrology and water resources, first at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and then at the graduate level at the University of Nebraska.

He worked at the Missouri River Basin Commission office in Omaha until Reagan-era cutbacks eliminated his job in the early 1980s. He could have remained a hydrologist by relocating to Denver but opted to move to the Twin Cities in 1982 for one reason: He loves cross-country skiing.

Recount blew vacation plans

"I was planning on skiing in western Yellowstone in Montana this week with some friends before this [the recount] came up," he said with a shrug.

Mansky, 55, rides his bike 12 miles each way to work from his home in Oakdale -- he's done it all through the past three winters. He'll pedal from his Plato Boulevard office below the Mississippi River bluffs, across the Wabasha Bridge to City Hall meetings with his tie and jacket on.

He backpacks, plays softball, has run the Twin Cities Marathon twice and has competed in several cross-country ski races. So he's well equipped for an endurance test like the recount.

"As a manager, I can't hire people with the idea that I expect perfection from them," he said. "No one would take the job under those circumstances. But when we boil everything down, we're going to find out the accuracy of our vote counting and administrative activities is going to be at a very high level that meets the satisfaction rate of the average person and, more importantly, the Legislature and the governor. They're our ultimate audience."

That's because they set the rules -- and can change them.

Mansky said the escalating tensions that have been observed from both campaigns are to be expected, given the high stakes that have everyone "on a knife's edge."

At one of his recount meetings, he told the various campaign observers: "You have nothing to apologize for. If you weren't being a pain in the butt, you wouldn't be earning your pay."

To which an observer said: "Joe, we're volunteers."

"Then," Mansky quipped, "you've got some get-a-life issues."

Curt Brown • 612-673-4767