Mike Lindell refuses to pay for recount in Minnesota GOP primary, files lawsuit against election officials

MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a longtime 2020 election denier, sued the Minnesota secretary of state and election officials, claiming they changed the scope of a potential recount in the GOP gubernatorial primary this month.

Lindell, who lost Aug. 11 to state House Speaker Lisa Demuth by about 45,000 votes , said last week that he would pay $825,000 on Monday to cover the cost of a full hand recount and audit of the race, in which he finished a distant second despite an endorsement from President Donald Trump.

The deadline for payment came and went without the money from Lindell.

He told NBC News in a phone call Tuesday that he refused to pay after he was informed that a recount would focus on the ballots cast for him or Demuth, rather than every ballot cast in the seven-candidate Republican field.

“I paid this to have all of the votes counted, not just two people,” he said. “I need to have a real recount, and I will fight this in court and get that real recount. I don’t care if it costs triple. I didn’t hold back anything. They did a bait-and-switch on me, and it’s disgusting.”

The secretary of state’s office said in a statement that it provided the contingent recount plan to Lindell after the State Canvassing Board approved it on Aug. 18.

The office said that “the plan follows state law and administrative rules on recount procedures and is consistent with previous recount plans.”

The lawsuits against the secretary of state’s office and the State Canvassing Board dispute the recount process the state outlined and seek to ensure no recount takes place based on those parameters.

Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, is chair of the canvassing board.

Lindell, who has repeated debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged by voting machines, said last week that his team found several “irregularities” in the election data, arguing that they were due to the use of electronic voting machines.

Demuth is set to face Democratic nominee Amy Klobuchar in the general election.

Leading up to the Minnesota primary, Lindell has faced multiple lawsuits from voting machine companies after he claimed the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent.

In one of the defamation cases , Lindell now owes even more in court fees than he does in sanctions after he refused to pay Smartmatic USA Corp., a voting machine company. Lindell said last week that he still does not plan to pay what the court says he owes.

He also was found to have defamed a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems in June 2025.