The hand-counting of 5,500 ballots that will determine the winner of a heated Minneapolis school board race began Wednesday at a city warehouse, after a sometimes bumpy Election Day that raised questions about the city's preparations.
City election officials said counting was likely to last until late Wednesday or early Thursday in the race between Josh Reimnitz and Patty Wycoff for District 4, which stretches between downtown and the Isles area.
The results will be provided to the secretary of state's office, which will post them on its website later Thursday. Reimnitz currently leads by 573 votes with about 80 percent of the district's votes counted.
The city blamed the problem on a printing error that prevented machines from reading the votes. Still, questions swirled about why the error wasn't detected earlier, as well as other problems -- why some voters had to wait hours in line, and why Minneapolis lagged so far behind the rest of the state in reporting results. The City Council's Elections Committee plans to scrutinize those issues, probably yet this month, according to Chairman Cam Gordon.
The number of polling places has dropped from more than 131 to 117 since the 2008 presidential election, and there were complaints about long lines from several areas of the city.
Priscilla Russell, who has voted at the same Third Ward precinct for 15 years, said she had to wait almost three hours to vote, much of that time standing in a brisk wind. She said she's never waited for more than an hour to vote in a presidential year.
"We hear stories from other areas of the country where voters wait for hours. I never thought it would happen to me voting in Minneapolis," Russell said. "The only thing that kept me in line was all the other people enduring the same wait with patience, good humor and courtesy."
Despite similar reports of lengthy lines at Seward and Loring Park neighborhood polling places, City Clerk Casey Carl said that polling places were sufficiently staffed. Asked whether the city puts enough money into its elections system, Carl said, "That's a policy question for the mayor and City Council."