Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder and one of Donald Trump’s most vocal election deniers, wants a recount of his humiliating defeat in Minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial primary. There’s just one problem.
He missed the deadline to request one.
Lindell, who was endorsed by Trump, lost to Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth by roughly 11 points, finishing about 45,000 votes behind the Republican winner.
Rather than accept the loss, Lindell claimed his campaign had uncovered unspecified election “anomalies” and vowed to demand a recount.
But Minnesota election law doesn’t give candidates unlimited time to reconsider an election result.
Candidates who lose by more than 0.25% can request a recount within five days of the official vote tally. They also have to pay for it.
The Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office prepared a recount plan on Aug. 18 and estimated that it would cost Lindell about $825,000.
Monday was the deadline. Lindell missed it.
His campaign claimed that an $825,000 wire transfer was “primed and ready” but said it withheld the payment because the secretary of state’s office had allegedly attempted an “unlawful bait and switch.”
The state’s recount plan called for recounting the votes received by Lindell and Demuth.
Lindell wanted something considerably bigger.
His campaign demanded a recount of every vote cast in both the Aug. 11 Democratic and Republican gubernatorial primaries, claiming that the alleged anomalies affected the entire election.
“In addition to being a violation of Minnesota state law, the anomalies in election night identified by Mike Lindell’s team show an algorithm that applies to ALL of the candidates,” the campaign said.
There’s one thing missing from that claim: Evidence.
Lindell has not provided evidence or detailed information demonstrating that an election-rigging algorithm exists.
That hasn’t stopped his campaign from threatening legal action.
The campaign said it was seeking to have the state’s deadline paused while a court considers its objections to the recount plan.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon’s office says there was nothing unusual about the plan.
“Our office provided the contingent recount plan to Mr. Lindell after it was approved by the State Canvassing Board on Aug. 18,” spokesperson Cassondra Knudson told CBS News. “The plan follows state law and administrative rules on recount procedures, and is consistent with plans of its kind for the past two decades.”
Lindell had sounded pretty confident before the deadline came and went.
After the state released its recount plan, he told NBC News that he would “personally go in there myself” to submit the request.
He also bragged that he was willing to spend more than the estimated $825,000, potentially pushing the cost “upwards of $1 million” so he could hire his own investigators and recount observers.
Then he failed to submit the required payment and request by the deadline.
For Lindell, the recount fight comes amid a growing pile of financial and legal problems.
In July, the Minnesota Reformer reported that he owed roughly $48,000 in unpaid property taxes.
He also owes voting-machine company Smartmatic $56,369 after a jury found him liable for defamation. By late July, he had accumulated another $56,500 in fines for failing to pay.
Lindell told a court in January that he didn’t have the money to pay Smartmatic, even as his campaign spent $187,000 buying his own books and financing other legal proceedings, according to NBC News.
His legal troubles have also involved millions of dollars in unpaid legal fees.
Attorneys representing Lindell in lawsuits brought by Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems quit in 2023 over unpaid fees, according to Reuters.
In June 2025, a jury awarded Eric Coomer, a former Dominion director, $2.3 million in damages against Lindell. Lindell said at the time that he was millions of dollars in debt.
Last month, Lindell and Dominion—which was later acquired by a former Republican election official and renamed Liberty Vote—reached a “confidential settlement” in Dominion’s $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit.
Now Lindell is fighting to keep his latest election challenge alive.
Demuth, meanwhile, will move on to the November general election, where she will face Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
Lindell says there are election anomalies.
But for now, the one thing that isn’t particularly anomalous is the state’s position: The deadline was Monday. Lindell missed it.
