Preserve All Election Materials
Letter to Minnesota Counties (or Any American County)
The following letter (scroll down) has been sent to all 87 counties already by email asking them to preserve all election materials.
The purpose of this letter is getting the ball rolling to prepare for possible election contests or challenges, which is what I call the ‘hold your hotdish!’ (hold your horses) in Minnesota. The actual process is an ocean of technical legal jargon designed to keep the people from verifying that election statutes, processes, and procedures were followed. Having been part of so far 2 MN Supreme Court cases, and read others, I’ve seen how carefully the statutes have been written.
Basically, we the people plan to hold the line and bring light back into a darkened process, not only with all the electronics but within the secretive absentee/mail-in counting back-room process, known here as ‘the absentee ballot boards’.
Challenging at the County Level
Instead of waiting to challenge at the state canvassing board level, why not start at the county level?
Hennepin County was recently caught not even using what’s known as a balanced absentee board, meaning they had excluded Republicans for the first 30 or so days of the 46-day absentee early mail-in voting marathon, until the MN Supreme Court today basically said, Please follow the statutes and use a few Republican judges—at which time I was contacted and many others to serve the last few days, after already over 200,000 absentee mail-in ballots had been processed by the county…
The problem is not only in Hennepin. In other counties, I have heard of absentee ballot board workers being asked to come in at certain times but not others and a certain amount of work being done by staff versus by the ballot board members themselves. My friend was right to tell me a couple years back that a big problem was in the unseen (to the public) absentee rooms, where mail-in ballots are opened, signatures checked, ballots accepted or not, and eventually put into the modem-connected (internet-connected) tabulators well ahead of election day.
Next Steps
Feel free to send this letter (Dropbox) to your county attorney and auditor—find out who they are + contact info at https://guardtheballots.org
Check when your county certification meeting will take place—also known as county canvass or county canvassing board meeting (It will likely be between Nov 11-18.) Mark your calendar.
Go to your county certification meeting. Consider asking most importanly A, B, or C, or all…
Ask the board members, BEFORE they certify, whether they have seen the updated voter histories from the statewide voter registration system (SVRS)… Why? Because the Minnesota Statutes say that for example absentee ballots “must immediately” be entered into the system—if they are not there, how can the county certify its election?
Ask the board members, How many election judges refused to sign the end of night summary tapes which ask them to (impossibly) verify that the machine tallied for each candidate accurately?
Ask the board members, How many incidents were reported in the incident logs and how many have been addressed?
Why are we only doing post election review hand counts on the statutory MINIMUM of 3% of precincts… doesn’t our county, _____ County, want to do better than the minimum standard? (7 cities in Anoka County have already requested an additional 17 precincts but rumor has it the Canvassing Board has already made their decision…)
Why not look up who the 5 members of your county’s Canvassing Board are? (Just ask the Auditor or Elections Manager) Perhaps some of your questions can be sent in advance…
#3, if the conversation is productive, even persuasive, will then get into a discussion about whether the 5 members of each county canvassing board even have a choice whether to certify, or if indeed this is a ministerial duty/act (no thought allowed) also known as a rubber stamp. (David Clements also talks clearly about the certification boards here on Rumble at timestamp 37m.)
There are too many laws, and in the future election laws will fit onto a 5x8 notecard but this year there are 512 pages of Minnesota Statutes and Rules for elections alone, and yet a few of us out here have read them carefully. What on earth for? Maybe for situations like these… where finally as a city, state, country, world, we have the opportunity to choose to be accountable and responsible for ourselves?
Bonus
#3 above—the county canvassing board meetings—will be a great chance to meet a lot of the people who have cared deeply about elections in your area and to once again voice your questions to the county certification team, a board of 5 people including usually two commissioners from your county.
What will happen in a few days? Who can say?
On a tangible level, I know that we cannot go ahead after this election with anymore systems and processes that lack transparency, that are black box, that are secretive… all which ask me to blindly trust many, many steps and handoffs and data transfers.
Therefore, even if my preferred candidates win, I will plan to join in anyone deciding to challenge or contest elections based upon violations to Minnesota law—these are valid because the results of these cases, if they occur, could impact and inform future lawmakers and future elections.
It would be a shame to feel like we won but forget WHY we all got involved to begin with, to get to the truth of the matter, to return to a system of voting and elections which do not require blind faith, that our out in the open for the public to verify… Clay Parikh and Rick Weible and Susan Smith and many others have said, hand marked, paper ballots, hand counted, in small precints. This is part of what will help to create and maintain a world where it is no longer tolerated to bring intentional harm to children.
Face to Face Event on Saturday
See you Nov 2 for the Save MN rally in St Paul at the Capitol.
Many good speakers and people will be there. We will celebrate how far we’ve come and the good work remaining ahead. Accountability is a choice.