What's 17 votes between friends?

Thoughts on Minnesota's primary election on Aug 13, 2024

Too much to write about and don’t have much time, here goes...

Minnesota doesn’t audit primaries, for starters.

There is a post election review [PER] process which hand counts a tiny number of votes statewide for general elections, statute is 206.89. Starting in Anoka County, several cities are expanding their hand counts for Nov 5, 2024 general election by adding their city’s precincts to their county’s PER review—any city or town can ask for this. (And any citizen can ask their city council or town board to consider doing this.)

Royce White emerged

From a cluttered field for Republican US Senate against a candidate who went back on word after losing in convention to run against White in primary—now White will challenge Amy Klobuchar. In a fair election on Nov 5, 2024 he will win relatively easily in my opinion once people hear about him and what he has to say and meanwhile actually research the impact of Klobuchar’s policy decisions on everyday Minnesotans. I obviously like Royce and that’s why I walked with him, marching to the Federal Reserve in Minneapolis on July 4, 2024—he understands the basic, fundamental issues and has even written about some of them at length. Again, do your research to learn who wants to represent you. Be careful who you follow; instead, be informed and educated.

I think it’d be great for Royce to call for serious audits of the primary—who knows how many votes he actually got—and because it would draw appropriate attention to an elections process which needs serious improvement. I’m not saying he should change his tone anything he’s already talking about, just add in calls to audit the primary election and see how many county auditors actually want to help with that.

Low voter confidence?

In previous elections Secretary of State Steve Simon has pointed to huge turnout numbers as proof that the system works and that people confidence in it. Well then, logically, will Steve Simon now announce that people have lost confidence given the ~14% turnout? Or is this rather a bigger problem for MNGOP Chair David Hann, who I am hearing may have a challenger or two in December? (MNGOP Chair elections are recently held in December after the November general.)

Massive donations to Emmer-backed candidate

Scroll through the more than $1.7 million in contributions on the FEC site for Joe Teirab (Emmer-backed) to see that about 90% of contributions come from outside Minnesota. Who is donating? Why do they care about Joe Teirab? Or is someone else influencing this? Not saying this is like the Act Blue situation emerging but it sure looks interesting. Teirab’s opponent, Tayler Rahm, was Republican-endorsed 75%-25% vs Teirab, but then he suspended his campaign 5 weeks before under pressure but remained on the ballot. I’d love to learn the whole story. That $1.7 million by the way was dwarfed by Cici Davis contributions in 2022 (also CD5) who similarly had millions come in from out of state. There shouldn’t be money in politics, but I’m a purist, but so much money from outside of district let alone outside of state is inappropriate. Part of the book I’m writing talks about ethically campaigning, part of why I accepted no political campaign donations and still got 36.9% in an un-audited election.

In District 10A, establishment candidate wins by 35 votes.

In other words, if 17 people had voted differently, the difference would have been a single (1) vote. There were complaints against that candidate because he was claiming to be Republican-endorsed when there was actually no endorsement. Despite narrow margin, there is not even an automatic recount because the margin of victory in state statute is by percentage. Diane Webb-Skillings may choose to pay for recount, with in-person and mail-in ballots currently sitting in five counties. Remember that discretionary recounts just hand recount the ballots without the ability to challenge the legitimacy of ballots (if there were fake ballots, such as photocopied ballot, or absentee ballots that snuck through signature verification, these cannot be challenged). I learned some of this during a Morrison County Commissioner recount in 2022 as observer for Jeremy Pekula, who is running again in November. (If your county commissioners, city councils, or town boards aren’t interested in election integrity, it may be time to step up yourself.)

The CD5 US House Rep race

Ilhan Omar v Don Samuels had more than 120,000 votes, as Phillip Parrish (candidate for MN Governor, 2026) points out here, statistically improbable. I looked too. Statewide total votes (which should roughly equals total ballots, when considering undervotes), means that there are perhaps 2x as many votes cast in CD5 (there are 8 congressional districts) compared to the statewide average turnout (about 14%).

When can absentee votes be counted?

Strangely, that same race was sitting at 0% reporting until it suddenly jumped to 5% reporting and then 99.5% reporting within 15 minutes of that, at 9:37pm. Of course, readers here will know that since there are modem-enabled tabulators in most of these precincts, that the results were known in real-time by anyone with central access. It’s odd the way they were reported, perhaps to draw attention to it. Another benefit of our system is that it is legal and illegal at the same time to count/tabulate absentee/mail-in prior to close of polls, so those totals are also available to anyone with centralized access.

Several public Logic & Accuracy Tests

Prior to the Aug 13 primary election, (at least) several did not include enough ballots and types of ballots according to MN statute and MN rules. This could have happened in many places, and details of that still being gathered. These public accuracy tests (PAT) or logic and accuracy tests (LAT) was where it was confirmed 100% that there are modems in tabulators. This is a conflict with state statute as well as with certifications of the tabulators. State statute says non-certified equipment can’t be used in elections, and anywhere a modem-enabled tabulator was used possibly violates the law.

A German film producer and I spoke last week in Canada

He is making film about manipulating voters. He told me the Obama campaign volunteers, in 2008, armed with thousands of data points on each voter, went door-to-door to speak directly to emotional issues they cared about. He previously made a Netflix show about Oktoberfest beer mafias.

His wife asked about upcoming elections in America. I said Trump has growing support. 70% of the live listeners to Elon/Trump space on X a couple days back were 35 and under… Elon says this chat was heard by perhaps 1 billion already in 48 hours. A lot of people will soon get over the propaganda pushed on them about Trump. So many layers to this, because I believe Trump is also playing a key role in something bigger, not only about America. “Biden” and “Kamala” have little support, and dwindling. Of course, in recent decades, if can’t manipulate voters, just change the election results. Robert A. Caro’s book, Working, talks about how LBJ won in Texas in 1948 by adding 200 votes last minute to win an election that had over 1 million votes.

You are sovereign in this country. Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, whose recent book Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Many Laws just sad: 'I hate to give you a homework assignment, but We the People, those are the first three words in the constitution… you are the sovereign in this country.' Book title reminds me of one of my personal favorite posts, Too Many Laws?

Paused payments for this Substack in July/August. Currently looking to help writers with their writing. If that’s you, let me know. As such, this newsletter will be free permanently as of today. If you want to support me, just buy the paperback version of [S]elections in Minnesota or the digital version HERE. ← Can also simply read free HERE. I’m working on a book about what it was like running for MN Sec of State in 2022… but I don’t know when it will be ready, maybe in 2025 when Phillip Parrish’s book is potentially also coming.