Number of Voters Does Not Reconcile with the Number of Ballots

Minnesota Majority, joined by five state legislators and concerned citizens launched a lawsuit in the Minnesota Supreme Court today, charging that Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and 25 county election have failed to comply with election laws. The action was announced in a press conference this morning.

Plaintiffs in the suit are Minnesota Majority, Jeff Davis, Dan McGrath, Jean Sanford, David Fitzsimmons, Representatives Matt Dean, Tom Emmer and Mark Buesgens and Senators Warren Limmer and David Senjem.

The lawsuit is based upon research recently conducted by Minnesota Majority. We compared the Minnesota Statewide Voter Registration System (SVRS) to the official 2008 State Canvassing Board Report (SCBR) and discovered a large discrepancy between the number of voters recorded in the voter registration system to the number of ballots cast on Election Day.  Both the SVRS and the SCBR were provided by the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office.  In late April, Bert Black, legal counsel to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, told Minnesota Majority that SVRS voter history updates pertaining to the 2008 general election had been completed by all counties, but the data on the SVRS disk provided showed that not to be the case.

The federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and Minnesota statute 201.171 require the Secretary of State and county election officials to update the Statewide Voter Registration System (SVRS) immediately following an election.  Minnesota Statute specifies that the task must be complete no later than 6 weeks following an election. But nearly 7 months after the November 2008 election, voter registration records are still not updated.

The lawsuit targets counties that are missing voter history updates for one or more precincts, but the out-of-balance problems do not appear to be limited to just these counties. “This isn’t simply a minor recordkeeping error,” said Davis. “If we cannot trust our election officials to perform the basic job of balancing their books, how can we possibly have confidence in our election system?”

“The state legislature wrote our laws to ensure integrity and transparency in our elections,” said State Representative Tom Emmer. “I’m troubled to see that the laws aren’t being followed by the officials who we have entrusted to administer our elections.  Instead of transparency, we have mud.  How can we determine what’s going on if we can’t even balance the vote totals?”

State Representative Mark Buesgens added, “This is simply unacceptable. The people of Minnesota deserve an election system they can be confident in and frankly, this doesn’t inspire much confidence in me.”

Minnesota Majority has advocated for improvements in the integrity of Minnesota’s electoral process since we initially discovered inconsistencies in voter registration records in October 2008.  Specific reform measures, such as voter ID controls and independent audits, were introduced in the 2009 legislative session, but were defeated by the DFL-controlled state legislature.

Our investigation into election issues is ongoing.

Take Action: Sign the Election Integrity Petition.

This lawsuit will cost us thousands of dollars, but we think its worth it to improve the integrity of our elections.  Please consider making an online donation to help fund the lawsuit.