Secretary of State Mark Ritchie employing intimidation tactics in an attempt to suppress investigation of voter registration irregularities.

Yesterday afternoon Secretary of State Mark Ritchie called a press conference alleging that Jean Sanford, a volunteer with Minnesota Majority, had inappropriately contacted a voter representing herself as working with the Secretary of State. Secretary Ritchie further asserted that the volunteer from Minnesota Majority was engaged in voter intimidation tactics.

"The complaint is completely frivolous and Mark Ritchie knows it," said Jeff Davis, President of Minnesota Majority.  In a sworn affidavit given today by Jean Sanford, she contradicts the voter's complaint.  Sanford said that she never represented herself as being associated with the Secretary of State.

“Jean is a sweet little grandma who is passionate about transparency in elections,” said Davis, “The voter’s own sworn statement indicates that he found Mrs. Sanford to be very kind. I can’t imagine how anyone could be intimidated by this lady.” Minnesota Majority believes that the voter, above all else, was concerned by the amount of information that is maintained on Minnesota’s public voter registration records.

"Mark Ritchie's actions are simply a ruse to deflect attention away from the real issue at hand – the obvious problems with Minnesota’s voter registration records," said Davis.  Minnesota Majority has been investigating apparent irregularities in the Secretary of State’s voter registration records for several days and has uncovered a large number of anomalies including: 

• POTENTIAL DUPLICATE VOTER REGISTRATION RECORDS: A total of 16,578 exact voter registration record matches using the criteria of first name, middle name, last name and birth year. When phone number is used instead of middle name as a matching criterion, there are a total of 488 matching records.
• VACANT AND NON-DELIVERABLE ADDRESSES: A total of 29,006 voters have a voter registration address which is flagged as being “vacant” by the United States Postal Service. A total of 62,822 voters list an address which is flagged as being “non-deliverable” by the Postal Service.
• DEFICIENT VOTER REGISTRATIONS DUE TO MISSING BIRTH YEAR: There are a total of 1,695 voter registrations with registration dates after August 1, 1983 when birth date was required by law.
• VOTER REGISTERING BEFORE THE AGE OF 18: Over 1,800 records have a voter registration date and a birth year that suggests the voter registered before the age of 18 years of age (some before they were born).
• VOTERS POTENTIALLY CASTING MORE THAN ONE BALLOT IN A SINGLE ELECTION: 76 cases in which it appears that a single voter may have cast more than one ballot, with thousands of additional records which merit additional review.

Volunteers have been researching these apparent discrepancies by taking photographs of vacant lots at addresses listed on voter registrations and telephoning individuals who appear to have duplicate voter registration records.  When contacting people by phone, volunteers give people their name, identify themselves as being with Minnesota Majority and ask the individual to verify their address.

Minnesota Majority suspects that Secretary of State Ritchie may be trying to use the power of his office to suppress further investigation. "The citizens of Minnesota should be very concerned when a public official exploits the power of his office to attack a private citizen who is simply trying to ask questions," said Davis.  "We are not deterred by Secretary of State Ritchie’s tactics. We have not done anything wrong. No one should be intimidated by our research, unless of course an individual was contemplating committing voter fraud." 

Minnesota Majority's attorney has submitted a letter to Mr. Ritchie asking him to immediately present all evidence pertaining to the false allegations.  Legal counsel is also exploring what, if any, improprieties may have been committed by Mr. Ritchie or members of his office in the process of bringing this complaint.

While nearly every Twin Cities media outlet was happy to report on Ritchie's false allegations on Wednesday, only a few media outlets attended today's press conference to get Minnesota Majority's side of the story (kudos to the Star Tribune for being one of the few that actually published a story). 

TAKE ACTION:  Contact Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and tell him what you think about his actions.  Write a letter to the editor and let them know what you think about the media's obvious bias in covering this story.

• POTENTIAL DUPLICATE VOTER REGISTRATION RECORDS: We found 261,000 records that have an exact duplicate match on the criteria of first name, last name and birth year. When middle names are included as a matching criterion, there are a total of 16,578 matched records. We found 488 registrations that matched on first and last names, year of birth and phone numbers.
• VACANT AND NON-DELIVERABLE ADDRESSES: A total of 29,006 voters have a voter registration address that is listed as “vacant” by the United States Postal Service. 2,977 of these vacant addresses are multi-unit housing, such as apartments. A total of 62,822 voters list an address that the post office indicates is “non-deliverable.” Our ongoing investigation into these suspect addresses has revealed that many of them simply do not exist. Photos showing vacant and non-existent addresses appearing on Minnesota voter roles have been presented to the media.
• DEFICIENT VOTER REGISTRATIONS DUE TO MISSING BIRTH YEAR: Minnesota Statute 201.071 requires voter registrations recorded after August 1, 1983 to include a birth year. A total of 1,695 voter registrations with registration dates after August 1, 1983 have missing birth years. By law, these voters should not be eligible to vote until they provide this correct identifying information.
• POTENTIAL DECEASED VOTERS: 3,689 voters in just Hennepin and Anoka Counties reported as deceased by the Social Security Administration remain on the voter rolls. According to the secretary of state’s office, these deceased voters will not be removed from the rolls unless they fail to vote in two consecutive elections. Because Minnesota doesn’t require photo ID to vote, anyone could walk into the polls on Election Day and claim to be one of these deceased voters to obtain a fraudulent ballot. As long as the deceased person continues to cast ballots, this can go on, unchecked in perpetuity.
• SUSPECT BIRTH YEARS: Voter registrations completed before 1983 didn’t require a date of birth, which is astonishing enough in its own right, being that there is a minimum age requirement of 18 to vote. Registrations completed after 1983 require a date of birth, but we found 1,695 such registrations on the rolls missing this information, and 2,106 voters who are over 100 (924 over 108 years old and 78 over 118 years old).
• VOTERS THAT MAY HAVE CAST MORE THAN ONE BALLOT IN A SINGLE ELECTION: We identified 13,340 potential cases of a single voter casting more than one ballot in past elections. We reduced that list to 100 records as a test sample for closer scrutiny and discovered a strong correlation which compelled us to forward these records to the 30 county attorneys in which these voters are registered. Individuals who knowingly cast multiple ballots could be found guilty of a felony under Minnesota Statute 204C.14.

While there may be rational explanations for many of these apparent inconsistencies, no one appears to be investigating these situations to make this determination. So far, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie appears to be dismissive of these findings.

Minnesota Majority’s findings are based upon a June 30, 2008 version of the voter file. There have been at least an additional 100,000 new registrations added to the file since that time. Almost half of these new registrations were submitted by ACORN, the organization which is under investigation for voter registration irregularities and improprieties in at least 13 states.

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie tried to assure Minnesota voters that his administration makes use of a sophisticated address validation process that involves mailing a postcard to new registrants.  But since he has taken office, there have been 4,051 new registrations or re-registrations that the Postal Service indicates have non-deliverable addresses.

Minnesota Majority has repeatedly urged the Secretary of State run a comprehensive crosscheck on the entire voter file prior to the November election, using records from the United States Postal Service, the Department of Public Safety and the Social Security Administration. Inconsistent records should be flagged so that local election judges can be notified of voters that should be screened. There are nearly 1,700 voters who, by law, should not be allowed to vote until they have updated their voter registration records providing missing dates of birth.  There are potentially thousands of additional deficient voter registrations due to invalid addresses or potential duplicate voter registrations. These voters should be required to verify their eligibility before casting a ballot this November.

There’s no more important job to be done by the Secretary of State than to ensure the integrity of our election process. There isn’t much time left until the election, but the simple steps we have recommended to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie could easily be implemented before the 2008 general election. Minnesota Majority has urged Secretary Ritchie to take immediate action so that voters will not call into question the integrity of our election process after the fact.

As yet, Secretary of State Ritchie has not offered any plan of action to ensure that the potential problems we have discovered do not taint this year's election.

TAKE ACTION: Contact Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and ask him to complete a comprehensive verification of Minnesota's voter file prior to this year's election. 

Yesterday, October 21, Minnesota Majority finally received an official written reply to our October 16 letter to the Secretary of State regarding inconsistencies we discovered in the state's voter file. We found the letter, authored by Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann, to be dismissive of our concerns. For example, Mr. Gelbmann claimed not to understand what we meant by the definition of a "vacant" address.  He also said the Secretary of State does not remove deceased individuals from active voter rolls until at least two elections cycles have passed in which the individual did not vote.  Are they concerned about disenfranchising dead voters? 

Today Minnesota Majority responded to the Deputy's letter by submitting a second letter requesting a comprehensive validation of the Minnesota voter file.  In our second letter we included the results of additional analysis which suggests that there may be thousands of duplicate voter registration records on the voter file and possible instances of voter fraud.

TAKE ACTION:  Contact Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and ask him to complete a comprehensive verification of Minnesota's voter file prior to this year's election.

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie held a press conference at the Capitol today to attempt to answer some of the questions raised by Minnesota Majority about the integrity of the voter registration file. He was joined by several county election officials who stood united in the message that Minnesota’s election system is unblemished.

While some of the questions raised by Minnesota Majority’s research were addressed, not all were adequately answered by the Secretary of State. He did indicate that new procedures are being put in place to better safeguard the integrity of the election system.

Election officials from several counties claimed that they have had few or no issues with questionable registrations. In case of a suspect registration, election officials are supposed to refer the registration to the county attorneys for investigation. Ramsey County has referred a total of 16 suspect registrations in recent months. The other county officials claimed either 1 such referral, or none.

It was suggested that some of the suspect voter registrations may have come from ACORN.

On the large number of voters found in the system who were over 100 years of age, Ritchie explained that before 1984, birth dates weren’t required to register to vote and that an arbitrary birth date was assigned to any voters without one listed in the records. He says the year chosen was 1900.

Questions remain unanswered about the large number of registrations claiming either unoccupied or nonexistent addresses. Ritchie alluded to the possibility that some of this could be explained by homelessness, or by new developments not showing up in the United States Postal Service yet.

Minnesota Majority’s analysis of the data is ongoing.

Minnesota Majority delivered a letter to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie today, asking him to immediately respond to the findings of an analysis of the voter file recently completed by the organization. The analysis identified many inconsistent and suspicious records within the file, including thousands of new registrants that voted in past elections, thousands of voters over 100 years of age and thousands of voters residing at vacant addresses.

The findings of Minnesota Majority’s research raise serious concerns about the integrity of Minnesota’s voter file. While there may be plausible explanations for some or all of the apparent inconsistencies, these findings should warrant a complete and comprehensive verification of voter records.

This comes at a time when there are voter registration problems surfacing across the nation. Last week U.S. District Judge George C. Smith ruled that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must perform verification required by the Help America Vote Act. That includes matching new registrants' information against information in databases maintained by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration.

A copy of the letter to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie together with the findings of the analysis project are available here.

There may have been a time when a voter could confidently know that a Democrat would stand for one thing and a Republican another, but that certainly isn’t the case anymore. Former Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman spoke on Senator John McCain’s behalf at the Republican National Convention. Republican Senator Norm Coleman was a Democrat as mayor of St. Paul. Even conservative Republican icon Ronald Reagan was once a Democrat. Minnesota Majority’s 2007-2008 Legislative Scorecard ranked some House Republicans lower than some Democrats on traditional values issues. That’s why it’s more important than ever to know where the candidates stand and be prepared to vote based on principles instead of just blind party loyalty.

To help voters understand where the candidates stand on the issues, Minnesota Majority launched a new election awareness campaign called “Vote Your Values Minnesota”. The campaign was introduced with a new metro-area billboard featuring an undecided voter facing a choice between party and principle. The billboard directs people to the website, VoteYourValuesMN.org which includes a collection of resources to assist voters get informed this election season. Visitors to the site will find their legislators’ voting record, tools to find their polling place, getting registered to vote and information about the candidates on the ballot in their district among other things. A number of competitive House races are also spotlighted with side-by-side candidate comparisons on a variety of traditional values issues.

Minnesota Majority has prepared a one of the most comprehensive legislative scorecards available that assesses how well incumbents have represented "traditional values" positions on the issues in the state legislature. We tracked over 40 votes during the 2007-2008 legislative sessions, spanning a wide range of issues including taxes, government spending, parental rights, property rights, health care, education and energy policy. In many ways, these votes represent the front-line in the battle to defend traditional values in Minnesota’s public policy.

Five legislators earned a perfect 100% score and were our top “Heroes”.

The Heroes
Bruce Anderson District 19A 100%	Mark Buesgens District 35B 100%	Tom Emmer District 19B 100%	Steve Drazkowski District 28B 100%	Kurt Zellers District 32B 100%

 An additional 23 House members receive an honorable mention for supporting “traditional values” positions 90% of the time or better.

Honorable Mentions
Tom Hackbarth, District 48A, 98% Mary Holberg, District 36A, 98% Mark Olson, District 16B, 98% Ron Shimanski, District 18A, 98% Michael Beard, District 35A, 98% Laura Brod, District 25A, 95% Matt Dean, District 52B, 95% Chris DeLaForest, District 49A, 95% Bob Dettmer, District 52A, 95% Rob Eastlund, District 17A, 95% Sondra Erickson, District 16A, 95% Paul Kohls, District 34A, 95%	Marty Seifert, District 21A, 95% Brad Finstad, District 21B, 94% Steve Gottwalt, District 15A, 93% Torrey Westrom, District 11A, 93% Dan Severson, District 14A, 93% Joyce Peppin, District 32A, 93% Joe Hoppe, District 34B, 93% Pat Garofalo, District 36B, 90% Erik Paulsen, District 42B, 90% Dean Simpson, District 10B, 90% Steve Sviggum, District 28B, 90%

On the opposite side of the fence we have our “Zeros” – legislators who more often than not voted against the interests of everyday Minnesotans. Instead, these House members supported policies that would raise your taxes, expand government and reduce your freedoms. A total of 9 House members were perfect “Zeros”.  

The Zeros
Margaret Kelliher District 60A 0%	Willy Dominguez District 58B 0%	Frank Hornstein District 60B 0%	Carlos Mariani District 65B 0%	Cy Thao  District 65A 0%
Alice Hausman District 66B 0%	Neva Walker District 61B 0%	Sheldon Johnson District 67B 0%	Karen Clark District 61A 0%

 An additional 18 members receive a “dishonorable mention" for scoring 5% or less.

Dishonorable Mentions
Erin Murphy, District 64A, 5% Diane Loeffler, District 59A, 5% Carolyn Laine, District 50A, 5% Melissa Hortman, District 47B, 5% Bill Hilty, District 8A, 5% Mindy Greiling, District 54A, 5% Kathy Brynaert, District 23B, 5% David Bly, District 25B, 5% Jean Wagenius, District 62B, 2%	Tom Tillberry, District 51B, 2% Linda Slocum, District 63B, 2% Mike Nelson, District 46A, 2% Joe Mullery, District 58A, 2% Tim Mahoney, District 67A, 2% Phyllis Kahn, District 59B, 2% Mike Jaros, District 07B, 2% Jim Davnie, District 62A, 2% Lyndon Carlson, District 45B, 2%

TAKE ACTION:  See how your state representative scored by visiting our vote tracking page and enter your zip code at the top of the page.  Contact your legislator and tell him or her how you feel about their score. Help spread the word by distributing copies of our Heroes and Zeros Flyer and a hardcopy version of our Legislative Scorecard in your neighborhood.

It was a low turn out at the primary election this year. Early estimates indicated 15% or lower overall turnout, but there were some pretty interesting races.

Override Sixer, Neil Peterson was shut out of the general election by GOP Endorsed candidate Jan Schneider in 41B (Edina).

On the flip side, unendorsed incumbent Jim Abeler (another sixer) came out on top against political newcomer Don Huizenga by a comfortable margin in 48B (Anoka). There was no endorsed Republican at all in that race.

Speaker of the House Margaret Kelliher takes Abeler’s win as a sign that suburban voters don’t oppose a higher gas tax, and went on to push the envelope saying, "It tells us when we can lay out a case for why we need a constitutionally dedicated gas tax ... the public is going to respond to that."

Incumbent DFLer Willie Dominguez was upset by primary challenger Bobby Joe Champion in 58B (Minneapolis). You can’t beat that name.

House District 7B had five candidates vying for the DFL spot. Roger Reinert came out on top of the heap, but it was a squeaker. Marshall Sternsen trailed by just 28 votes.

John Kappler defeated challenger Mady Reiter for the GOP spot in 53A (Anoka). Reiter ran a strong campaign but still came in behind Kappler, 1103-638.

Endorsed Republican candidate Tom Effertz was upset by challenger Julie Johnson in a tight race in 54B (Shoreview area).

Conservative Maplewood mayor Diana Longrie made a run for the DFL ballot position in 55A, but came in second to Leon Lille in the three-way Democrat primary race.

Eccentric liberal DFLer Phyllis Kahn faced a strong challenge for her ballot position from Joel Rainville, but managed to pull out a commanding win in 59B (Minneapolis).

In St. Paul, there were two GOP primary races. Mark Roosevelt defeated Lucky Rosenbloom in 66B and Meg Ferber came out ahead of Sharon Anderson in 64A.

Former candidate for Minnesota’s Attorney General, Jeff Johnson handily secured a ballot spot in Hennepin County’s 7th Commissioner District, taking 56% of the vote. He’ll face runner up Joan Molenaar (26%) in the general election. Johnson's strong showing in the primary bodes well for his general election battle.

Endorsed Republican Mark Olson was defeated by Allison Krueger, a candidate who promised not to campaign if she wasn’t endorsed. Despite not campaigning, an intense effort by the Senate Republican Caucus and other activists concerned about Olson’s viability due to some family issues ushered Krueger into the Republican slot on the ballot in Senate District 16.

The Supreme Court races have boiled down to Tim Tinglestad vs. Paul Anderson for the 3rd seat and Lorie Gildea vs. Deborah Hedlund for the 4th.

You can view all the primary election results online at the Secretary of State’s website.