The midterm elections left residents of Minnesota in a state of anticipation due to a recount of the votes for governor. At the end of the first count, Democratic candidate Mark Dayton was just barely ahead of his Republican opponent Tom Emmer. An automatic recount was triggered, caused by Dayton’s slim lead of less than half of 1%.

Dayton commented about the recount, “That’s entirely appropriate, to assure that the will of the voters has been tallied correctly and accurately.” He is currently ahead of Emmer by only 8,856 votes.

One speaker for the Republican Party of Minnesota said, at a news conference, “I don’t think it’s any coincidence with Mark Ritchie administering this process in the last two elections that we stand here today.” He was referring to the last well-known case of a close call and a recount: the Senate race of 2008, which involved a very slim victory of Al Franken over Norm Coleman. The recount process for that election lasted until June of 2009.

Among Tom Emmer’s plans for education, if he should pull through and win the race, are plans to “enhance student testing”, evaluate teachers frequently, and to further innovate the public education system by creating more charter schools.

In Mark Dayton’s education plan, he illustrates his promises to lower class sizes, close the achievement gap, and make sure that every student has the best possible teachers and principals. Dayton also assures that he will raise school budgets and confirm that all teachers have fair salaries.

Elections in Minnesota have been extremely close before and taken months to conclude, but in case of Mark Dayton and Tom Emmer, we can hope that it will take much less time and that we will have a clear winner, and a new governor, quite soon.