Why doesn't MN audit primary elections?

Because Minnesota elections are already beyond reproach

South Dakota did post election audits for their June 2024 primary, but Minnesota is not required to do any by statute.

Instead, Minnesotan are asked to…

• Trust the absentee ballot board members doing signature verification,

• Trust the electronic voting equipment which is mandated to tally flawlessly, and

• Trust that a lackluster test prior to the election ensures that both hardware and software are not tampered with from that moment through the entirety of the ~46-day election cycle (not to mention central computers or poll pads or voter rolls)

Please remind cities and towns of this fact—the primary elections are not audited.

A law was even passed by the 94th Minnesota Legislature (2024) to prevent election judge hand counting right after polls closed to check the VOTE totals match (not just the number of ballots).

• If primaries are not audited, who does that benefit?

• Is it true that sometime primaries are more important than the general?

• Why wouldn’t we take a bit of time to do a post election review (PER) hand count as is done for the general election?

Minnesota Statute 206.89 POSTELECTION REVIEW

Hat tip to reader Robin for this one!

Our elections often have tabulator issues.

— Election staff to this writer during the Hennepin County Canvass in November 2022 when question was asked why incident reports were not reviewed prior to certification

Photo by Spencer Bergen on Unsplash