Minnesota Majority’s June 29^th Report on Felons Voting in Minnesota’s 2008 election has created quite a stir as media organizations speculate on whether fraudulent votes could have impacted the hotly contested US Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. In some instances the speculation has run wild and some published news stories on the subject aren’t providing news consumers a complete and accurate picture.

Report Finds Franken Illigitimate

First and most obvious is the common headlines claiming “Report Finds that Felons Tipped Election to Franken” and variations on that theme. Minnesota Majority’s report does not make this assertion. We acknowledge that it’s a possibility, but besides not being conclusively provable, that isn’t the point of the report. Minnesota Majority isn’t interested in undoing the 2008 election. That’s been decided, and right or wrong, it’s done. Our objective is exposing problems with the past election to prevent their recurrence in the 2010 election coming up in November. 

The pundits can analyze our data any way they want but Minnesota Majority’s report does not say Senator Franken was elected by felons. It simply demonstrates that there is strong evidence of a significant number of ineligible felons voting in 2008 and calls on officials to investigate.

 

Fox News: Felons Voting Illegally May Have Put Franken Over the Top in Minnesota, Study Finds

 

 

Press, commentators and even county prosecutors have been playing fast and loose with the numbers provided in Minnesota Majority’s report. Minnesota Majority generated a computerized list of names of possible ineligible felon voters by comparing to publicly available databases. A list of felons indicated to be ineligible to vote by the dates provided in the file from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the secretary of state’s 2008 voter history file. The matched file contained 2,803 names matched exactly on first, middle and last names and year of birth.

 

The frequently reported figure of 341 suspected fraudulent voters is often used out of context and incorrectly in reporting. Minnesota Majority examined about 900 Hennepin and Ramsey County records in greater detail, locating court documents to verify the accuracy of the computerized match. Of those, we located 341 court records which indicated the suspected fraudulent voter in question was both convicted of a felony and still under department of corrections supervision at the time of the 2008 General Election.

 

Some news reports have suggested when it’s all said and done, the actual numbers will be much lower than suggested. From which numbers are they starting? If the baseline is 341 as is typically reported, the numbers will actually be much higher. Starting from 2,803, the numbers of prosecutable cases will be lower, as the report acknowledges likely false-positive matches due to incomplete information in the databases. The number of prosecutable cases is expected to be around 1,000, statewide.

 

Pat Diamond, a prosecutor in the Hennepin County Attorney’s office told KARE-11 News that Minnesota Majority referred 451 names to them for investigation. The actual number was 899. KARE-11 reported, “Of 451 names submitted by Minnesota Majority, 235 have been ruled out for prosecution while 216 are under review.” What happened to the other 448 names? Hennepin’s findings that 216 of 451 names on Minnesota Majority’s list may be prosecutable based on the available evidence is consistent with our own findings detailed in the report, but half of the cases forwarded for investigation are being ignored in Mr. Diamond’s statistics.

 

 

Ramsey County has thus-far charged 30 individuals for election crimes stemming from the 2008 election. Phil Carruthers claims only half of those actually voted. While it’s true that they weren’t charged with ineligible voting, the 2008 voter history file indicates that they did vote. Minnesota Majority also obtained photocopies of the signed roster pages of some of the individuals Ramsey claims did not vote. Are they deliberately deflating the actual numbers to minimize the problem before the public?

 

 

Phil Carruthers, a former DFL legislator now heading the prosecutions division of the Ramsey County Attorney’s office told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “overwhelmingly, their statistics were not accurate.” The only “statistics” used in the report were in explaining our methodology. That’s how we did it, and what we found – how can that be inaccurate? The conclusions that some have drawn from those statistics could be in error, but the numbers simply are what they are, when read in the original context of the report. 

Between Hennepin and Ramsey County, prosecutors say they are currently investigating 396 suspected voter fraud cases. At the same time, they are charging that Minnesota Majority’s data is wrong. How can they know that when the investigations are supposedly still under way?

Carruthers is quick to criticize and minimize Minnesota Majority's data, but Minnesota Majority has found evidence that Ramsey County prosecutors may be doing sloppy work. Carruthers claimed that of the 30 people they've charged with election fraud, only half of them actually voted. The others were just charged with illegally registering to vote. Minnesota Majority has obained the signed polling place roster pages of felons convicted of illegal registration. It looks like they voted and Ramsey County either missed it or chose to ignore it. 

 

The Star Tribune reported, “Part of the difficulty, prosecutors say, is proving whether suspected felons had their voting rights restored by Election Day, whether they knowingly cast votes while they were ineligible, or whether they even cast the ballots themselves.”

 

Hennepin County prosecutor Pat Diamond told the Pioneer Press that proving the ineligible felon is actually the person who voted is difficult, even though they can match exact names, dates of birth, drivers license and social security numbers.

 

County prosecutors implied the suspected votes could be explained by voter impersonation, making it difficult to prove who voted. Either way, it’s fraud and this makes the perfect case for a photo ID requirement.

 

Diamond is essentially saying he can’t prove voter fraud unless someone confesses, because we don’t know for sure who’s actually voting, but how can that be? Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has said in all of Minnesota’s history, there has never been a documented case of voter impersonation. Of course, such a crime would never be detected with our current system, but I digress.

 

 

Minnesota Majority has been calling for a photo ID requirement for voters and some view our report as supporting evidence that the measure is needed to secure our elections. Critics have pointed out that a photo ID requirement wouldn’t prevent fraudulent voting by ineligible felons, noting that they are likely to have valid ID. This makes sense on the surface, but it leaves out a key part of the voter ID proposals that Minnesota Majority supports.

 

Minnesota Majority has advocated for an electronic “poll book” system that would replace the archaic paper roster pages and multiple lines broken down by last name with a laptop computer loaded with a database of ineligible voters. This electronic poll book system would be coupled with a phot ID requirement and a card reader. Voters would simply swipe their ID and the system would instantly verify their eligibility to vote, speed up same day registrations and instantly record their participation in that year’s election in the voter history file, eliminating thousands of hours or error-prone manual data entry. The benefits of this system are numerous, including preventing almost every varierty of voter fraud and tremendous cost savings.

 

See the Pioneer Press: Ramsey County / 30 People Charged With Election Fraud.

 

 

A quote often trotted out by reporters and commentators as evidence that the 2008 election was fraud-free was a statement give to the Minnesota Supreme Court by Norm Coleman’s attorney during the recount: “there was no evidence of fraud in the election.”

 

Information is available now that wasn’t available to Coleman’s legal team because the election officials failed to update the voter history files from the 2008 election until April of 2009, even though the statutes call for the updates to be done wihtin 6 weeks following an election. The Research Minnesota Majority has done would have been impossible during the legal battle due to failing by state and county election officials. In addition, it does not appear that Coleman’s team was looking for this kind of fraud.

 

MinnPost’s Derek Wallbank reported, “Franken's lead lawyer during the months-long recount, Marc Elias, told The Hill Wednesday that the 2008 election had been thoroughly litigated and fairly decided.

 

“Sen. Coleman was represented by some of the best lawyers there are in the country,” Elias said Wednesday. “At the end of that process, the lead lawyer for Sen. Coleman told the state Supreme Court that there was no evidence of persistent fraud in the election.”

“It’s a process that I think both Sen. Coleman and the Franken side thought worked well,” Elias added.”

It’s a bizarre and twisted logis to presume that because something was not known about before, new information cannot be correct. This is the nature of discorery. We learn new things. Fraud we didn’t know about 18 months ago has now come to light.