By Kevin Duchschere

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer picked up six votes in Hennepin County, as county officials Monday morning certified the votes from last week's election and forwarded the results to the Secretary of State's office.

The slight pick-up doesn't change the overall structure of the race between Emmer and Democrat Mark Dayton. After some slight corrections, which are typical as counties recheck their results, Dayton has a lead of about 9,000 votes. Those results are unofficial until the statewide canvassing board meets on Nov. 23.

At a Hennepin County canvassing board meeting Monday, elections manager Rachel Smith said the only discrepancy spotted in her county since last week's initial returns happened in a Plymouth precinct, where records showed seven fewer ballots than walk-in voters.

When the machines were run again, the difference ironed itself out and Emmer had 579 votes in the precinct rather than 573. DFL candidate Mark Dayton's 363 vote total did not change.

The county canvassing board took just 30 minutes to conduct the business of certifying results, which is required in all 87 counties by state law. County Commissioner Jeff Johnson, a Republican who ran for attorney general four years ago, moved to accept the report. The vote was unanimous.

Hennepin County figures show that 470,477 votes were cast in the county, including 32,820 absentee ballots. About 61 percent of eligible voters turned out.

Representatives of both campaigns attended the morning session.

Attorney David Lillehaug, a key figure in DFLer Al Franken's 2008 U.S. Senate recount victory, said that Hennepin's experience suggested that few if any mistakes will be uncovered. "We expect the results to hold up," he said.

Tony Trimble, a lawyer for the state GOP, said that Republicans aren't confident that returns are accurate, in part because of the election night glitch in Hennepin County that mistakenly doubled the votes reported and temporarily shrank Emmer's deficit.

That glitch, attributed to human error, was corrected and the proper totals were entered.

Trimble said that Republicans were giving no thought to waiving an automatic state recount, which would click in if the candidates are only half a percentage point apart.

And he said no decision has been made on whether Emmer might seek a recount if the final returns fall outside that range. It will depend on ballot irregularities found in the meantime and whether the trend is favoring Emmer, he said.

It was at this same meeting in Hennepin County two years ago, at the end of the U.S. Senate race between Franken and Norm Coleman, that Lillehaug introduced the problem of voters whose absentee ballots he said had been unfairly rejected.

The board at that time turned down his request to reconsider the disputed ballots, kicking off a process that wound its way through the state canvassing board and up to the state Supreme Court before Franken was declared the winner.