Ballot surprises always help one party

Election Day was Tuesday, November 5, 2024. At least that’s what we used to call it. Now it’s just a day where Minnesota begins the process of collecting and counting all of the ballots cast in our nation-leading 46-day vote window. How else do explain today’s news — three days after “Election Day” — where thousands of ballots are being added to vote totals in the closest races in the state.

Sherburne County just announced that thousands of absentee ballots they claim met the November 5th deadline were not added to their “unofficial” totals because a faulty ballot scanner failed to transmit data to the state election reporting system. Once the new votes were counted, the lead of Democrat Dan Wolgamott went from 28 votes to 191 votes, taking the race out of range for an automatic recount. The new votes also bumped Shane Steinbrecher slightly ahead of Shari Knip for the final seat on the Elk River School Board. Steinbrecher was endorsed by the teachers’ union, Knip was endorsed by the Minnesota Parents Alliance.

Sherburne County’s response was basically, “Well, that’s why we call them unofficial, suckers.”

Any progress Secretary of State Steve Simon makes trying to convince Minnesotans our elections are fair is blown up when the results trickle in for days after the election and always benefit candidates on his side of the aisle. This was never a problem before the 2020 election. Election results used to populate the Secretary of State’s website when the votes were counted in each precinct. There were never partial results in a precinct reported. The language “Precincts Reporting in District: 100%” used to mean all the votes had been counted.

Since 2020, Minnesotans can no longer trust the data on Simon’s website because it keeps changing days after the election.

Voting Machine connected to Internet?

The Sherburne County case brings up another issue: Why is the ballot scanner connected to the state election reporting system in the first place? I thought ballot scanners simply counted the ballots and printed out a receipt, and that receipt was used by county election workers to enter data into the SOS website. Also, why is a ballot scanner used to count absentee ballots? Many of them arrive in the mail folded in three places and are difficult to run through a scanner. These are questions that need to be answered, perhaps in a House Committee hearing next January.

Heightened vigilance and reporting certainly cut down on election integrity issues both here and nationally. But Minnesotans need to keep asking questions and demanding accountability for these strange events surrounding the counting of ballots.

As my colleague Bill Glahn wrote this week:

The MN Secretary of State, Steve Simon, has had a rough election cycle, with the unexplained reporting anomalies, documented instances of unattended ballots in transit, a ballot board fiasco, and ballot printing errors.

Which leads us to keep asking the question: Why do the new results always benefit one party?