I recently received a letter from State Rep. Jeff Backer that included slurs against “Minneapolis liberals,” “St. Paul liberals” and “homosexual activists” and “Metro Jay” referencing Jay McNamar, an Elbow Lake resident who grew up in Ada.
Like Trump, Backer fails to grasp the fact that we are all in this together. Differing politics, differing regions, differing religions, differing orientations need to be treated as humans, part of our communities and part of our state. Demonizing Americans and Minnesotans leads to the gridlock we all abhor. America stands for respecting differences, not disenfranchising half of this State. In the last campaign a huge infusion of outstate money funded an almost daily dose of glossy hate mail over the last month against McNamar. Now, his letter full of nothing more than name calling, continues sowing division.
So it seems like the question this fall will be Backer’s gridlock and division, or McNamar‘s acknowledgement of one district and one state.
Here are photos of the front and back of the letter Boole takes issue with:
Photos: Jeff Backer, R-Browns Valley (top); the letter (middle and bottom).
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It's an awkward moment for them, because the 2015 historic funding levels praised in the lit piece only came about after Governor Mark Dayton vetoed a bill that short-changed our schools.
But House DFLer have gotten hold of a piece that's even more egregious, using the same boilerplate language to praise the 2015 vote--on the part of a state representative who wasn't even elected to office until a February 2016 special election.
Here's the DFL House Caucus press release:
Earlier this week, a political mail piece paid for by the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses, a corporate special interest group that doesn't disclose it's expenditures or donors publicly, landed in mailboxes across the state. The piece credits Republicans in the Minnesota House with making "historic investments" in education.
Given the fact that it was actually Governor Dayton who demanded these increases as part of negotiations leading up to a special session in 2015 - after House Republicans originally proposed a mere 0.6% increase in funding for our schools, which would have led to program cuts and increased class sizes across the state - this claim is misleading at best.
An identical version of the mailer was sent to voters in District 50B, however, supporting Republican Representative Chad Anderson, who wasn't even in office until February of 2016 - well after the vote was taken, making the claim an outright lie in this case.
This is not the first time Anderson has relied on false and misleading communications to win votes in District 50B. During his special election, he distributed mailers stating that he was the "only candidate endorsed by Anne" - clearly implying that he had been endorsed by former DFL Rep. Ann Lenczewski, who supported Andrew Carlson.
"This pattern of reckless disregard for the truth from Representative Anderson and his special interest allies raises serious questions," said House DFL Leader Paul Thissen in response to the most recent misleading mailer. "Bloomington families deserve a representative who will be straight with them, not someone who relies on underhanded tricks and false claims from outside special interest groups in order to win their votes."
The front of the mail piece from the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses is at the top of this post; for comparison, here's the post sent to Minnesota House District 17A:
As we explained in our earlier post, Miller wasn't talking about education in the events where the side photos were taken, but rather issues related to animal agriculture.
But at least he was in office in 2015 so that he could be dragged kicking and screaming to vote for education funding that wasn't tied to his anti-transgender agenda. That's more than anyone should say about Anderson.
Photos: Two of the CMB postcards.
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In 1996, Chmielewski became embroiled in the "phonegate" scandal. It was revealed that Chmielewski had given family members state long-distance access codes, allowing them to make phone calls at state expense. Chmielewski was ultimately defeated for re-election in 1996, after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor.
There is one thing the public can get its hands on from every Minnesota lawmaker: long-distance telephone bills. Remember those?
Back in 1993, the Legislature was stung by a scandal over the misuse of a toll-free number for legislators that was lent out to friends and relatives, who racked up an $85,000 phone bill on the House majority leader’s account.
“Phonegate” led to criminal charges, resignations and a law mandating that telephone records absolutely, unequivocally are public to anyone who asks for it. Marty said the law requires him, every month, to sign off on paperwork for bills totaling maybe four bucks.
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Miller's actual history on education funding is a much less rosy story (more on this later in the post), and two of the photos on the postcard might be telling us more about Miller's priorities than the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses knows.
What were Tim Miller's photos really about?
Looking at the photos on the right of the card (image embedded below), Bluestem thought we'd seen them before and were puzzled why any graphic designer would place them on mail piece touting a lawmaker's education record.
Thanks to Kim Gorans (Gorans Farms) and George Rehm (Discovery Farms) for discussing with Torrey Westrom and me the challenges of animal ag here in WC MN. They did amazing research on water runoff.
The Discovery Farms Minnesota program is funded by grants provided by the Minnesota Corn Research and Promotion Council, Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, and Minnesota Turkey Research and Promotion Council to the Minnesota Agricultural Water Resources Center (MAWRC). The Minnesota Department of Agriculture "provides Clean Water Funding for monitoring equipment and technical staff," according to the program's website, while the also has received a grant from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
Whatever the nature of the water runoff related to animal ag that the gentlemen discussed in this campaign photo, the photo doesn't illustrate Miller's alleged devotion to pre-K-12 and post-secondary education or providing more money for public education.
Here's the screengrab:
The second photo is likewise devoted to an ag topic, rather than education. On May 5, 2015, a photo of Representative Chris Swedzinski, R-Ghent, Miller, Governor Mark Dayton, and Representative Dave Baker was posted on the Miller campaign Facebook page with the following caption:
This photo was snapped at another non-education funding event, the GOP Rural Caucus's free turkey burger cookout at the height of Minnesota's 2015 avian flu pandemic. The free food was intended to make consumers confident that the nasty, turkey-destroying disease wasn't a threat to people who ate turkey.
The screengrab:
These photos aren't about education. They're about ag.
. . .this year we can win the Minnesota senate back and the house and senate can make the next two years the most miserable years in Governor Dayton’s life.
Lovely and generous vision of governing there, indeed.
Here's a photo of the front of the same postcard, with the name and photos changed, sent to voters in House District 11B, represented by freshman Jason Rarick, R-Pine City, who defeated incumbent DFLer Tim Faust in 2014:
In the 2015 legislative session, Tim Miller and his House Republican colleagues did not fight for $500 million in increased education funding. The Republican majority’s education finance bill that Tim Miller voted for did not even keep pace with inflation. Had Tim Miller had his way, it would have led to teacher layoffs and would have short-changed our schools and particularly our pre-schools.
At the end of the legislative session, Governor Dayton vetoed the education finance bill. He sent it back to the legislature stating that his approval required a real investment in our schools. Due to Tim Miller’s actions, we were forced to pay for a costly special legislative session; which brought us about a week away from a government shutdown. Governor Dayton fought for and won this increased funding in the special session education finance bill despite Tim Miller; not because of Tim Miller . . .
Just before the vote on the soon-to-be-vetoed bill, the Mankato Times reported:
Rep. Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg, added an amendment (HF 1546) Student Physical Privacy Act, which passed by voice vote, to require students to use the bathrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms appropriate to their birth gender, following a recent Minnesota State High School League policy change.
Authored by Rep. Jennifer Loon (R- Eden Prairie) House File 844 would increase state funding for Early Learning and K-12 programs by $157 million – less than 1% over current levels – in order to accommodate House Republicans’ goal of lowering taxes by $2 billion. This is the lowest figure among two other proposals by the DFL led Senate and Governor Mark Dayton.
The Senate has proposed $350 million in new spending; Dayton has proposed an additional $695 million, most of which would be for his top priority of offering universal preschool for all 4-year-olds in the state. . . .
The DFL says that [the bill's] overall 1.2 percent increase to the state’s per-pupil funding formula is too small and doesn’t keep up with inflation. As a result, they say it will force schools to cut programs, increase class sizes and force the layoffs of teachers.
They also say that projections show that changes to Early Learning Scholarships contained in H.F. 844 would lead to a 41% decrease in the number of students being served by the program. The bill raises the state’s school funding formula by .6% and caps future funds aimed at students most at risk of falling behind in school.
With the date and content of an upcoming special session still unsettled, the Legislature and Gov. Mark Dayton did reveal significant agreement on the next Minnesota budget on Friday. . . .
The final bill is closer to the nearly $700 million in new money Dayton wanted than the $150 million House Republicans initially proposed.
“It’s worth it, $125 million for the extra few weeks,” said Sen. Charles Wiger, DFL-Maplewood, Senate Education Committee chair. “When you look at where the House started, I’m pleased. I admire the governor’s tenacity.”
More than half the new money, $350 million, will go toward increasing by 2 percent a year the per pupil funding formula schools use for general operations. The base per-student funding schools receive will grow from $5,831 this year to $6,067 in 2017. School officials said increasing that funding was among their top priorities this year. . . .
The final bill also includes several policy changes, including streamlining the process for licensing teachers. It does not include controversial changes to teacher seniority rules for layoffs or a requirement that transgender students use bathrooms based on their sex at birth. Republicans had pushed for those provisions.
The bathroom language was Miller's contribution, not the "historic" increase in funding. That came from Dayton and the DFL.
An omnibus education bill with $56 million in additional funding for E-12 education and no funding for higher education passed the House Monday, 84-46. Rep. Jim Knoblach (R-St. Cloud) sponsors HF2749, which he said will also serve as the overarching supplemental budget bill for the House.
With zero budget targets for E-12 and higher education, most of the bill’s funding comes from a provision allowing school districts to repay and refinance high-interest state “maximum effort” loans. The funding targets “critical needs” of school districts, including $16.8 million to address teacher shortages, said Rep. Jenifer Loon (R-Eden Prairie), who chairs the House Education Finance Committee.
Despite the bill’s funding for teacher workforce development, rural broadband and a variety of other programs, House leadership’s zero targets for education drew strong criticism by DFLers — as did several of the bill’s policy provisions.
Minnesota will spend more money on broadband access, preschool education and combating racial disparities under a supplemental budget signed Wednesday by Gov. Mark Dayton.
The budget adds $300 million in spending to Minnesota’s $42 billion two-year budget, which lawmakers passed in 2015.
Dayton and legislative Democrats had pushed hard for up to $700 million in new spending in the bill, while Republicans proposed no new spending. . . .
Are Republicans putting students first? Pushing for more funding for schools? For more pre-kindergarten programs? That would make a cat laugh.
Perhaps that's why the Coalition for Minnesota Business couldn't find a photo on Tim Miller's campaign Facebook page that illustrated that he was actually working for those priorities.
Voters will probably never know who paid CMB for this postcard
Aside from the legislator's name and three photos related to the freshman legislator, we're told it's the same junk mail the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses mailed praising Republican incumbents in competitive races around the state, according to our source. The "non-partisan" group didn't send any mailers praising DFLers who took the same votes on education funding bills signed by the governor in 2015 and 2016.
While the CMB does have a political action committee (PAC) and this piece includes the disclaimer that the piece is "Not authorized by any candidate or any candidate committee," the postcard will count as a "issue" communication since it doesn't tell us to vote for Representative Miller in the fall and it was sent by the non-profit "grassroots" organization, not the PAC.
This practice is completely legal under current state law, though Bluestem is betting few of our neighbors see this postcard as anything other than support for Miller's re-election. We just won't know where CMB gets its money for these postcards.
If 2014 is to be the model for this year's CMB PAC spending, the "grassroots" group's PAC will get a wallet erection beginning mid-month and continuing through the general election in November. The 2014 pre-primary report listed $171.97 cash on hand, with on the September 2014 pre-general report revealing $143,000.00 coming in from other business PACs and the House Republican Campaign Committee (HRCC). The HRCC contribution was $76,000.00 in in-kind polling data, which was very generous of the GOP caucus committee to give that sort of thing to a non-partisan group.
The October 2014 pre-general and the year-end filing reported showed that cash and in-kind giving to the committee jumped to $440,775.00 for the year--much to independent expenditures ($342,139.42).
As of the 2016 pre-primary report, the PAC has $280.65 cash on hand, unchanged from the May report.
Photos: Tim Miller, from his Facebook page (top); Miller and Torrey Westrom meeting with farmers in 2014 (middle); Same postcard template, customized for Jason Rarick.
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On Monday, Minnesota House Public Safety committee chair Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center, via urged voters in House District 31B to vote for incumbent Tom Hackbarth, R-Cedar, in light of the latter's staunch Second Amendment record and endorsement by gun rights groups:
Republican State Representative Tom Hackbarth northeastern Anoka County, needs the help of every "Pro Second Amendment" voter in his district. He is endorsed by the NRA with an A+ rating! He also has the support of the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance with an A+ rating. Tom's opponent received a "B" rating from the NRA! Call your friends and have them vote this coming Tuesday for Representative Tom Hackbarth. Tom has a 100% Pro Second Amendment, Pro-Gun, voting record!
A comment on Cornish's Facebook page defending Bahr's lower scoring by the NRA--which has since been hidden or deleted from the wall--asserted that Bahr opposed the NRA position on individuals living in public housing being able to possess firearms, since those who can't pay their own way shouldn't be trusted with guns. Bluestem finds this notion about restricting a constitutional right concerning. Would Bahr also restrict rights to free speech, assembly, voting or religion based on receipt of public assistance?
It's totally not ironic that Cal Bahr, Hackbarth's opponent, is considered the more conservative candidate of the two Republicans, and has received the financial support of the Freedom Club State PAC and socially conservative GOP power couple Bob and Joan Cummins. Bahr also received a post-filing $4000 infusion of cash from the Senate District 31 RPM (July 22 24-hour-notice) from the Senate District 31 Republican Party, which closed the pre-primary reporting period with $2,993.12 cash on hand. It will be curious to see where the extra money came from that allowed the senate district district to cut that check, but we'll have to wait, because political party committees don't have to file 24-hour-reports on large contributions near a primary.
Hackbarth lost the endorsement to Cal Bahr, who had sought the endorsement in 2014 and 2012, but didn't primary the incumbent after the sitting representative secured the endorsement.
After more than two decades in St. Paul, GOP Rep. Tom Hackbarth lost his party’s endorsement back in April to East Bethel businessman Cal Bahr. Initially, Hackbarth wasn’t sure whether he wanted to run for his House district again, which includes Anoka, but he ultimately jumped into the primary contest. That miffed some local Republicans, who said Hackbarth initially promised to abide by the endorsement. Local Republicans activist are also likely primary voters, making this a race to watch. Hackbarth will tout his record in St. Paul and hope his name recognition carries him through to a victory.
We haven't seen any reports of polling in the district, so we'll be watching to see whether the local party endorsement beats support from the House Speaker, county commissioner and gun rights god Cornish.
Tuesday afternoon, state Rep. Tom Hackbarth went to the St. Paul Police Department and picked up his gun.
How his silver .38-caliber revolver came into the possession of the cops is a story that Hackbarth himself acknowledges sounds “really weird and odd.”
Last week, St. Paul police pulled the Anoka County Republican over and seized his loaded Smith & Wesson after he told them he was “jealous” about his “girlfriend,” whom he didn’t have any contact information for but suspected was with another man, according to police reports.
Police had been called to the Highland Park neighborhood by a security guard at a Planned Parenthood clinic, where Hackbarth had parked and appeared “suspicious.”
Hackbarth, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, was briefly handcuffed but was released without being charged, and he told the Pioneer Press he did nothing wrong or illegal. . . .
It's become the stuff of off-the-record legend around the capitol--and we can say no more.
Screengrab: Tony Cornish urges voters in House District 31B to vote for incumbent Tom Hackbarth over endorsed challenger Cal Bahr (top); the invite to the fundraiser at Running Aces (bottom)
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We've frequently written about one of the conspiracy theories that's a staple in the diet of fear on the right in parts of Minnesota: Agenda 21, and we're not the only one in Minnesota to call whatever on this malarky. Over four years ago, John Gilmore wrote in the Minnesota Conservatives post, Agenda 21: Because There's More Room For Crazy:
Thought hemp, raw milk and ending the Fed was the sum of craziness currently infiltrating the Republican Party of Minnesota? Think again. Agenda 21 is the next big thing in making a political party entirely irrelevant in Minnesota. . . .
Members of the Morrison County Board of Commissioners said they’re satisfied with the comprehensive plan for the county. Still, some members of the public are less than thrilled. . . .
One issue present at both the planning meeting and the Planning Commission’s public hearing July 25, was local versuss regional control and more specifically, Agenda 21.
Agenda 21 is a UN created plan for sustainable living local governments can choose to follow. Critics say the plan can be used to take away property rights.
“The reason we are concerned about this wording is how it has been used in other parts of the country,” Greg Smith said.
Smith and others were looking for the county to add protective language into the plan saying it would not follow outside mandates on issues like open/green spaces. These are areas that can’t be developed and are used for things like parks or community gardens..
Commissioner Kevin Maurer proposed an added piece to the plan addressing local control.
“The county comprehensive plan is not intended to or meant to be a means by which local control is given to any other entity. It is a plan meant to encourage and support local control,” Maurer said at the July 25 public hearing.
His statement was added to the draft the commissioners looked at Tuesday. The commissioners said they were OK with the plan, but residents Richard and Shirley Japp were not.
“There is still not anything in the plan about Agenda 21,” Richard said.
Maurer asked whether or not it would hurt the county to add language specifically saying the county doesn’t accept the directives of Agenda 21 and other regional plans. . . .
Alrighty then. How prescient was the Minnesota legislature to authorize comprehensive planning years before the conference in Rio? Bwwaahhhaaaa....
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Elections are not merely a way to choose winners. They are also a way to make losers believe they have lost. When losers accept their defeat, they strengthen the democratic process by thinking ahead to the next election, deciding what they will do differently. When they fail to accept their defeat, they weaken the democratic process by challenging the legitimacy of the past election. In the worst case, civil unrest ensues. Elected officials may be assassinated, government buildings blown up, coups plotted.
Because accepting defeat requires soul searching within a party about what went wrong, there’s always a temptation to unify around “we were robbed.” In the past, candidates have found it easier to resist that temptation than rank and file party members have. That’s because political pros are more familiar with the precautionary checks and balances built into the mechanics of election administration. The average citizen understands casting a vote about as well as turning on a light switch. That is, they understand their own role at the surface of the process, but not what the election administrators (or electric utilities) do behind the scenes.
Unfortunately, 2016 is different. Three months before there are any general election results, one of the major-party presidential candidates is already stoking distrust of those results rather than tamping it down. As a result, ordinary citizens will have to assume responsibility for sober assessment of the electoral process. Here are four suggestions for what the ordinary person can do to calm the fear of election fraud.
Use Precise Language and Demand It From Others
Unsubstantiated claims of election fraud will come across as plausible if they connect with a broader, bipartisan narrative of “rigged elections.” To prevent that narrative from becoming the accepted conventional wisdom, use precise language to describe elements of the political process that you see as in need of reform.
For example, you might appropriately suggest that a particular party eliminate super-delegates from its nominating process, or that it use primaries rather than caucuses. Or you could advocate for the adoption of ranked choice (instant runoff) voting in general elections so that voters can more safely express a preference for a third-party candidate.
Each of those topics, and many others, is fair game for debate. Stay specific, though. Make sure what you are advocating is clear. Don’t obscure it with vague terms for the actors (“they” or “the establishment”), activities (“the system”), and defects (“rigged” or “broken”).
To shape the tenor of conventional wisdom, it isn’t enough to be precise in your own language. Whenever someone at the water cooler or bar gripes about “the system” being “rigged,” politely press them to be more specific.
Watch Election Administrators at Work
Learn how election officials ensure that eligible voters can vote, ineligible individuals can’t, and the votes are accurately counted and reported. Not that these processes are perfect — those who work in this area are constantly looking for refinements and opportunities to import best practices from one jurisdiction to another. But they are taking a lot of care that you probably don’t know about.
Although you can read about election procedures, you’ll gain a better appreciation if you watch some of them in action. You’ll be able to more credibly push back against fear of fraud if you speak as a first-person witness. The opportunities for observation vary from state to state; what follows are two examples from Minnesota, one on election day, the other afterward. These two processes provide important protection against fraud and also protect against non-malicious errors and equipment failures. Yet few Minnesotans even know these protective processes exist, let alone have exercised their right to observe them.
When the election judges close a precinct polling place at the end of election day, they don’t simply print out a results tape from the ballot scanner. Among other things, they count the number of voters who signed in and verify that this count matches the number of ballots cast. They also ensure that the number of blank ballots the precinct received matches the total of ballots cast, ballots set aside as spoiled or duplicated, and ballots remaining unused.
These steps detect any situation where someone inserted extra ballots into the ballot box or, conversely, removed some of the ballots. So long as the ballot box remained locked, neither of those things ought to have been possible, but the whole point of audit processes is to provide an extra, publicly observable cross-check.
You can show up at poll closing time and watch this painstaking process play out. Minnesota election law specifically grants the general public the right to observe poll closing activities. Be respectful, though, of the election judges, who are engaged in a stressful process that requires exacting attention to detail. If they lose count, they have to start over, extending an already long day. Therefore, please observe from a reasonable distance and don’t interrupt with questions about the process.
What about the risk that the ballot counters might not have counted the ballots correctly? Could malicious software have deliberately altered the counts? Various precautions guard against this, some as simple as restricting physical access to the ballot counters, so that it is difficult to install modified software. However, you don’t need to trust the programmers, technicians, or guards — there’s a simple, direct cross-check that you can observe.
After the election is over, each county randomly selects a subset of its precincts for hand counting. This “post-election review” is not the same as a recount: it is done regardless how close the election is and regardless of whether a candidate requests it. You can find out the location, day, and time your county has chosen for its post-election review; it will be somewhere between the 11th and 18th day after the election.
On that day, the general public is again legally permitted to observe from a respectful distance. You will watch bipartisan teams of election judges manually examining each ballot, sorting them into piles, and counting the number in each pile. They will ensure that they have accurately counted the ballots and they will compare their counts against those that were printed on election night by the machines. That way, you don’t have to trust all the technical details of the machines’ operation: you can see with your own eyes that the machine counts are confirmed by humans .
Observing these hand counts is not riveting. Beyond the tedium of the process, the outcome is underwhelming. Perhaps one or two ballots will be identified where the voter did not properly fill in the ovals. Any adjustments to the vote counts will be very minor. But that’s precisely the point: you can see that election administrators are willing to perform a great deal of labor just to show that there isn’t any big discrepancy. If you observe that care, you can respond to cynics who seem to think election administrators are easy marks, just blindly waiting to be defrauded.
Expect to be Surprised
When the actual weather differs from the forecast, nobody thinks the thermometers or rain gauges are rigged. And the survey professionals who forecast elections (or explain them afterward, using exit polling) uniformly take the election results as the gold standard against which they judge their work, not vice versa. They understand that their surveys can be misleading for any number of reasons. In particular, they may not understand how the survey respondents compare with the voters, or they may not understand how those individuals’ survey responses compare with their actual votes.
Election results that differ from exit polls are not a smoking gun. Nor are election results that differ from expectations in other ways. For example, some people have an idea about the statistical patterns they expect to see when comparing large precincts with small ones. Upon looking at election data from many precincts, they find that these patterns don’t actually arise. Repeatedly, and across wide areas, the actual data fails to fit the expectation. The logical conclusion is that the expectation is based on an incomplete understanding of how voters in different sized precincts behave, not that fraud is rampant, yet slipping undetected past audits such as the post-election review.
The one time when surprising results may actually be a sign of trouble is in the unofficial results released on election night and in its immediate aftermath. Seasoned election professionals and campaign operatives know to keep an eye out for precincts that are way out of their normal range. For example, a usually lopsided precinct may come in with exactly equal numbers of votes cast for two candidates. That’s a red flag that in the rush to report preliminary results, a number got transcribed from the wrong column.
Errors in the election night reporting can be unnerving. For days after the election, the totals will keep changing as more and more of the errors are found and fixed. The key thing to keep in mind, though, is that the unofficial election night reporting does not feed into the official results, even after corrections. The official results are tabulated much more carefully by well-rested clerks working under less time pressure. Until that process is complete, the updated election night reporting gives you a better approximation to what is coming than exit polls do. However, you should still expect some surprises.
Keep Voter Identification in Perspective
Every state conducts its elections differently. One of the highest profile areas of difference is how voters are identified. In Minnesota, the voters identify themselves by stating their name and address. In some other states, they need to show an official document. This makes it harder to vote, whether one is a fraudulent impersonator or simply a voter without the requisite documentation at hand. However, this distinction does not mean that states such as Minnesota can expect significant fraud through the appearance of impersonators at their polling places.
The 2016 election is not the first with strongly motivated participants. People have poured billions of dollars into trying to win previous elections. Nor is it the first election in which many states allow undocumented voters — the recent court cases have generally preserved the status quo. Yet there have been close to zero incidents detected in which someone signed into a polling place under a false identity.
Ah, but just because impersonation isn’t detected, does that mean it isn’t occurring? The fearful seize upon this question. They would have you believe that without careful checking of identity documents, there would be no way to detect an impersonation. If that were true, then a lack of detections would be meaningless. But it isn’t true.
An impersonation might be detected in any number of ways. Some of those ways might result in the perpetrator being caught. For example, the staff at the sign-in table might personally know the target of the impersonation. Or the impersonator might brag about their crime to someone who rats on them. Other forms of detection might let the perpetrator get away. For example, the target of the impersonation might show up to vote and find their line in the poll book already signed. Or election officials removing a deceased individual from the election rolls might find a record of that individual having voted between the date of death and the date of removal.
None of these things are happening. Not only aren’t impersonators getting caught, they also aren’t leaving tell-tale traces behind. Election administrators are looking for all those things, and they aren’t finding them. Some advocacy groups claim that they have found such signs themselves. They have turned in lists of hundreds of suspected cases. But these have invariably turned out to result from the advocacy groups not checking as carefully as the election administrators do. For example, a suspiciously signed line in the poll book turns out to be a simple off-by-one error. Or a case of John Doe voting after death turns out to be John Doe, Jr., voting after John Doe, Sr., had died.
Could an impersonator get lucky and avoid detection? Sure, in any individual instance. However, throwing even a close election would require hundreds or thousands of impersonations. The math is daunting. Suppose you are such a clever fraudster that you can impersonate someone with a 99% chance of going undetected. If you attempt two impersonations, the chance of getting away with both of them — not being detected in either — is .99 squared. Three impersonations would be .99 cubed. And 300 impersonations would be .99 raised to the 300th power, which happens to be less than 5%. That is, even if each time you are nearly sure to go undetected (99% sure), once you’ve committed the crime 300 times, you are nearly sure (95% sure) of being detected somewhere along the way.
Putting that math together with the lack of detected impersonations gives strong evidence that nobody is trying to rig an election by committing hundreds of impersonations. Also, keep in mind that nobody knows in advance just how close an election is going to be. Senator Franken was elected in 2008 by a 312-vote margin, but if anyone had tried to rig that election, they wouldn’t have known in advance that 313 impersonations was enough. Even though it would have been a recklessly large crime spree, it wouldn’t have been enough to provide any confidence of victory. Perhaps that’s why even strongly motivated campaigns concentrate on turning out legitimate voters instead.
Photo: Austin, MN election administrators print on 2014 election results after voting closed at the Mower County Senior Center. As our guest contributor explains above, respectful members of the public can observe this process. Via Austin MN Herald.
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Letters published in the Rochester Post Bulletin and the Kenyon Leader suggest that local critics of the North American High Speed Rail Group's controversial scheme to build a short-line bullet train between Rochester and the Twin Cities aren't going away quietly.
Indeed, the Republican rival to Senator Matt Schmidt, DFL-Red Wing, points to local opposition as a reason to vote the incumbent out.
North American High Speed Rail Group announced through the July 27 Post-Bulletin that its preliminary study regarding its proposed high-speed passenger rail between the Twin Cities and Rochester needed more time, and it has asked the Minnesota Department of Transportation to extend two of its three work permits.
There appears to be no formal press release or any notification to the public through the NAHSR website or to those persons who took the time to sign up for NAHSR's web contact list. If the public missed this article, how would people know?
Even the two extended MnDOT work permits have not been posted.
The June 24 P-B quoted NAHSR's Chief Manager Wendy Meadley: "Right now, I don't see any final barriers that would stop the project from going forward."
In the July 27 P-B, Meadley reportedly said the rail group needs more time to meet with key stakeholders to determine whether to push ahead with the project.
What does the possibility of a legislative special session have to do with stakeholder meetings? Hasn't NAHSR had enough time to lobby the MInnesota legislature? Aren't public citizens stakeholders?
Meadley cannot have it both ways. But, as usual, this project waivers back and forth depending on which way the public relations wind is blowing.
Something blows with this project, but Bluestem doesn't think it's the wind.
Red Wing Republican candidate raises issues about train
Via an August 1 post on state representative Steve Drazkowski's personal Facebook page (screenshot above), we found SD21 Republican challenger Mike Goggin's letter to the editors of the Kenyon Leader, Dear Residents and Businesses of State Senate District 21, which centers on the high speed rail project. Draz hopes that "we can hogtie this boondoggle" by electing Goggin. Goggin writes:
As I campaign throughout the District, I keep hearing from more and more people who are concerned about the proposed Zip Rail train between Minneapolis and Rochester.
Whether I am in Cannon Falls, Wanamingo, Kenyon, Pine Island, Mazeppa or Zumbrota, the residents of our Senate District are concerned for the future of their land and livelihood. There is a real fear that land which has been in families for generations will be taken away via eminent domain. There is a real risk that family farm land that has helped feed us since before statehood will be repurposed for a high speed bullet train, built for the elites on the backs of us ordinary Minnesotans. This proposal contains no foreseeable benefit for the people in our District. I find it hard to believe that taxpayers won't bear any of the enormous costs. Over the years I have traveled Highways 52 and 56 following my boys’ sporting events and those highways aren't even close to capacity.
Everyone knows that this train would be too expensive and unnecessary. In addition, there are significant concerns about such a train bisecting people's property, making it inconvenient or difficult to cross the line. Add to these concerns the often unmentioned threat to public safety that would come with an elevated 200-mile per hour bullet train and we are left with something that is simply a bad idea.
My opponent in this Senate race has said that he will do whatever it takes to see that Zip Rail isn't built. But even while legislation passed the House to stop Zip Rail, he hasn't done a thing in the Senate to protect us from Zip Rail. He wouldn't even publicly support or sign on to the Senate companion bill to HF 920, which would put safeguards in place for people who would be affected by Zip Rail.
Leading up to his election, Sen. Schmit was quoted in a Winona Daily News article dated March 31, 2012 saying, “in my case, the walk will match the talk” when elected. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case for Zip Rail.
I want all residents and businesses of Senate District 21 to know that when elected I will take action to protect us all from Zip Rail. The first piece of legislation I will author in the State Senate will be the Highway 52 & Highway 56 Farmer, Business and Landowners Protection Bill, with the following three requirements for any train project to comply with:
There will be no government money to be granted, given or borrowed to any company.
There will be no use of the government's powers of eminent domain allowed to acquire land for such a project. ALL land must be purchased at fair market value from willing sellers.
A fully-vetted decommissioning fund will have to be in place before one shovel of dirt is dug to ensure that the residents of Senate District 21, or anyone else in our State, does not get left stuck with a mess if the project is not completed or fails.
An overwhelming majority of the residents in our District are rightfully opposing this Zip Rail train project. When elected, I will fight for our District residents’ rights! Unlike my opponent, I promise you that my walk will match my talk! I will put the public servant back into public service.
Will Schmit pick up the gauntlet and defend his record on the project? We'll share it in a new post if he replies.
Images: A CCARL member asking questions about ziprail (top); Steve Draz not impressed with the high speed rail project (bottom).
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While that sign at least hangs on some historical fact about Bill Clinton's philandering, the administrator of the Clearwater County Republican Party's Facebook page has posted something that's completely unhinged: the Photoshopped image of Democratic presidential candidate shaking hands with Osama bin Laden.
Contest Directions: Senator Hillary Clinton officially declared her bid for presidency 2008. Making her announcement Hillary said "I'm in". This is the phrase she rarely heard from Bill in their bedroom. In this contest you are asked to photoshop anything connected to Senator Hillary Clinton running for president of United States. Examples may be photoshopping magazine covers, campaign photos, or future presidency achievements.
The musician first lived in the United States as a student in 1988 and now lives in the Washington DC area, according to the bio on his website.
Additional hilarity? The fact that while Alexander Davis's photo has enjoyed 35,389 shares as we post this, despite the far fewer comments by a handful of members of the Friends Who Like Donald J. Trump group who spar with Davis about how the photo is a fake. He tries to defend posting it by saying it's "a statement" but not without insulting Angie Ortiz, the woman who challenged him:
Alexander DavisYou're an idiot this is a statement okay I suggest you don't look at none of my stuff that I put up so go away go vote for Hillary you Moslem ugly face woman.
Bonus bogus hilarity! Tim Miller bamboozled by Babylon Bee!
But the Clearwater County Republicans aren't only ones having trouble discerning truth from satire. As the screenshot above illustrates, our own state representative, Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg, was outraged by a post from Adam Ford's Christian News satire site, the Babylon Bee.
Several of Representative Miller's Facebook friends helped him out with that one, and the post is no longer visible to the general public. As we are not Facebook friends with the freshman Republican, we cannot say through personal experience whether he has deleted or edited his post.
Screengrabs: Clearwater County Republicans post of photoshopped image (top); the original photo of Clinton and Indian musician Shubhashish Mukherjee (middle); Tim Miller publicly bamboozled by the Babylon Bee (bottom).
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Jim Hagedorn, the endorsed Republican candidate in Minnesota's First Congressional district, is doubling down on his notion that rudeness is the ticket to win the hearts, minds and votes of Southern Minnesotans.
The Uptake reports that he agrees with Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump's attacks on Gold Star parents who are Muslim because ...Muslim extremism!
Writing about now-Sen. John Thune's race against Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson, Hagedorn turned his razor-sharp wit on America's most coddled demographic—Native Americans. "The race has been highlighted by a Democrat drive to register voters in several of several of South Dakota's expansive redistribution of wealth centers…err…casino parlors…err…Indian reservations. Remarkably, many of the voters registered for absentee ballots were found to be chiefs and squaws who had returned to the spirit world many moons ago." Alleging that fake votes from Indians would provide the margin of victory, he echoed "John Wayne's wisdom of the only good Indian being a dead Indian."
Hagedorn may have been joking. (The quip's real author, General Philip Sheridan, wasn't.) But American Indians were a favorite punching bag over at Mr. Conservative. . .
Hagedorn was among Republican hopefuls interviewed by The Uptake Tuesday at Farmfest for the article, MN GOP Congressional Candidates Back Trump Despite His Statements. While "Despite His Statements" is accurate for Sixth District Congressman Tom Emmer, and Seventh District Republican primary challenger Amanda Hinson, Hagedorn is totally on board with Trump's flame war against Khizr and Ghazala Khan:
Emmer’s support comes with some caveats. He thinks Trump needs to be a little more careful about what he’s saying.
“I understand that he feels as though he was attacked, but when you’re dealing with Gold Star parents — people who have made the ultimate sacrifice — I think you just…they get a free pass on all of that. You know what, that’s something he’ll have to learn.”
Jim Hagedorn, the Republican candidate for Minnesota’s first congressional district, has no such misgivings about what Trump is saying. When asked about Trump’s criticism of the military parents, Hagedorn immediately zeroed in on the fact that they were Muslim.
“Here’s the underlying issue, we have to secure our borders and we have to protect the American people from Muslim extremism, supremacists who want to come here. I have a refugee program time out that I’ve called for and I also don’t believe that at this point in time, given what’s going on in the world, it makes sense to bring people to America from countries that hate America. It’s time to step up and put our country first.” . . .
“What we should do with refugees, is we should try to have ‘safe zones’ and make sure that they can be repatriated to their home country. But I would try to create safe zones near their home country rather than bring them into our culture and change our culture.”
We are at war with Islamic supremacists devoted to the ideology of radical Islam. Given the state of the world, what good comes from transferring more people to America from nations that hate America?
It's time to take a refugee program timeout and discontinue migration from hostile nations. That's only commonsense.
As for refugees, we should work to create safe zones in or near war torn nations, with the goal of repatriating them to their home countries.
My politically correct opponent, Tim Walz, thinks my ideas are Islamophobic and unMinnesotan. Fortunately, the vast majority of Southern Minnesotans agree with me and do not favor additional Islamic migration from hostile nations.
In fact, First District voters do not understand why Walz supported Obama's program to flood America with almost 1 million Muslims from nations that hate Christians and abhor Western values.
The result: Minnesota has a terrorist recruiting problem from existing East African refugees.
It's time to elect a new Republican President and new First District Congressman who will defend the United States and protect the American people from Islamic supremacists.
Short skinny: Hagedorn can just pretend Trump hasn't insulted the Khan family because terrorism! The same day Hagedorn posted the Breitbart.com article, Congressman Tim Walz, the high-ranking enlisted man to have served in the House, issued this statement about the flap:
Washington, DC [8/1/16] – Today, Rep. Walz released the following statement:
The Khan Family has earned our respect and gratitude. As someone who wore this nation’s uniform for 24 years, I served alongside soldiers of every race, religion and background. That’s what makes us strong. We must always unite in support of Gold Star families who made the ultimate sacrifice and continue our work to ensure that sacrifice is honored and remembered.
Photo: Jackson Proskow tweeted the photo with this cutline: "At Arlington National Cemetery, there's a growing memorial at the grave of Capt. Humayun Khan" (top); Hagedorn's Facebook post (bottom).
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Paul Schwarz, chair of the Chippewa County Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party sent the photo above to Bluestem Prairie.
The sign is on the side of Highway 212 in Lac qui Parle County just over the bridge from Montevideo, Schwarz tell us. The Appleton native writes in a statement:
Unfortunately, this is Trump's America. Vulgarity and sexism are now just fine. When you have the nominee of the Republican Party saying even worse things than this, you cultivate and encourage this kind of rhetoric. It's shameful.
The signs allude to Monica Lewinsky' infamous blue Gap dress, as well as Clinton's professional pantsuits. Schwarz is correct about the vulgarity and the sexism of reducing a woman to what she wears, rather than by what she says and accomplishes, or by her spouse's behavior.
Schwarz didn't call for the sign's removal; rather, in the tradition of free speech, called it as he sees it. His reaction isn't "censorship," but criticism. (As for Minnesota Nice, we're being ironic in the headline. Truth is that many folks in these parts still appreciate civility in public).
Perhaps New York Times Unbuttoned columnist Vanessa Friedman wrote too soon in her January post, How Hillary Clinton Ended the Clothing Conversation. For the dirty-minded conservative in West Central Minnesota, only a dress will do.
Here's a photo of the sign discussed in that post:
Photo: An anti-Clinton sign in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota. Photo by Paul Schwarz; submitted to Bluestem Prairie.
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The first inter-party congressional debates of the political season happen Tuesday morning at Farmfest near Redwood Falls, Minnesota. The forum, which is focused on rural issues is scheduled to start at 10:30 A.M. and go until noon.
The UpTake has provided the live embeddable video feed below.
State lawmakers will be addressing timely issues affecting agriculture in Greater Minnesota during FarmFest.
Forum coordinator Kent Thiesse says a state legislative forum is replacing the Second Congressional District candidate debate scheduled Wednesday morning at 10:30. . . .
Senators Gary Dahms, Vicki Jensen and Bill Weber will join representatives Jeanne Poppe, Rod Hamilton, Clark Johnson and Chris Swedzinski as panelists during the legislative forum.
Thiesse says the congressional debate was canceled after three of the five confirmed candidates withdrew late last week.
Photo: CD7's Collin Peterson and 2014 challenger Torrey Westrom at Farmfest.
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Chair: Sen. Ron Latz 09:00 AM Room 10 State Office Bldg.
The meeting is of the Prison Population Task Force, an informal discussion among a group of stakeholders including members of the House and Senate, officials from state and local agencies, among others. Rep. Tony Cornish is the co-chair of the meeting.
Agenda:
The discussion will focus on county-based supervision and diversion programs, probation revocation, and offender re-entry services.
The informal discussion was covered by nonpartisan House staffer Mike Cook at Session Daily in Prison task force looks at recidivism prevention ideas. Co-chair Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center, wasn't buying the idea of spending money on recidivism prevention programs, Cook reports:
Not all task force members are on board for providing additional dollars.
Cornish said he’d like to see more evidence of success before added money is given.
It's clearly a nonpartisan legislative meeting, however informal. However, if one looks at Representative Cornish's 2015 campaign finance report, getting a hotel room related to the early morning meeting is a campaign expense:
We would think Cornish and his treasurer would know better about this sort of expenditure, which can be charged to a campaign committee as a non-campaign disbursement, as the Cornish committee did with a similar cost of serving in the legislature, mileage to attend a hearing on RealID:
It's actually surprising that the House itself doesn't reimburse lawmakers for these sorts of expenses for hearings held at the state capitol complex, especially for committee chairs like Cornish since the work is connected to the tasks he and others do in the course of policy making.
Whatever the case, we emailed Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board director Gary Goldsmith to ask about the reporting of the hotel lodging as a campaign expense. His emailed response was quite simple: "I would expect that kind of expense to be reported as a noncampaign disbursement for costs of serving in office."
Photo: Rep. Tony Cornish, nattily dressed in a camo jacket. Screengrab via The Uptake.
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In audio posted on Youtube, Heintzeman tells his supporters that he wasn't certain why his heart was against the bill, traditionally carried by a Crow Wing County representative. When he later learned about an Explore Minnesota tourism ad aimed at attracting same-sex couples to Minnesota he knew God had protected him and given . Heintzeman prefaced his remarks about tourism and same sex marriage with
. . . there was a tweet that went out earlier this afternoon encouraging folks maybe to come to our event from the other side of the aisle, and there might be some conversation around that cause we'd the event to stay private even though it's an open area, so we're not recording anything tonight. So I can just talk in a heart-to-heart with people that have supported me.
Heintzeman: . . . And there have been times throughout the course of the last two years where issues come up, and constituents have contacted us, talked to Keri and I, and really blessed us by helping us kind of see perspective on an issue, and a good example is the Explore Minnesota tourism bill [2015]. I was asked to carry an $11 Million increase to their budget. And I couldn't explain to my leadership, I didn't have any good reason why not. The representative from the lakes area, Crow Wing County, always carries that bill.
And the more we [Heintzeman and his wife Keri] talked about it, the more we sought the Lord on it, I just had a no-go. My heart was not allowing me to move forward and support that bill. And much to the chagrin of my leadership, I had to continue to stand and not work on that, so they gave it to another representative, Rep. [Dan] Fabian [R-Roseau] took it.
Apparently, being a co-sponsor doesn't count. The freshman legislator continues:
About three, four weeks after session ended -- I want to preface this comment by pointing out that obviously a lot of you guys know that marriage was an important issue in Crow Wing County and was a big part of the discussion two years ago--well three, four weeks after session ended, Explore Minnesota Tourism released an ad-buy, in the details of the ad, promoting Minnesota as a destination for couples that were of the same sex wanting to get married.
Woman: Wow.
Heintzeman:That ad didn't run in Minnesota. It ran in states all around Minnesota with different law in regard to same-sex marriage.
Heintzeman's description of the ad isn't particularly accurate, since it doesn't promote Minnesota "as a destination for couples that were of the same sex wanting to get married," but rather features husbands Ben Meents and Chet Ritchie as they enjoy the splendors of the North Star state, as The Column's Andy Birkey wrote in Minnesota’s tourism council ad features gay couple.
Travel editor Kerri Westerberg reported in the Star Tribune that the ad ran in "Minneapolis-St. Paul; Milwaukee; Madison; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Omaha; Kansas City; Des Moines; Chicago; Denver and Winnipeg."
Given that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality in late June 2015, we're pleased that the ad buyers had it in their hearts to buy time in markets where same-sex marriage was legal, in addition to places where it was not (as Heintzeman believes), since that would have been a waste of money. God--and media markets--work in mysterious ways.
Heintzeman continues:
Heintzeman: So, I just want to leave you with that, I guess pointing out that when I first talked to everybody here two years ago, I referenced 1 Kings 3:9. There's two accounts, Solomon on his bed asking one account, he asked for wisdom. And I like the accounting kings, because he talks specifically for asking for an understanding heart that would know the difference between good and evil, that he would judge God's people rightly. And so many times on the surface over the last few years, there's things that seemed right to Man, that seemed right to me, but thankfully the Lord protected us from those things, and we're very blessed to be able to keep out of those kind of situations like that Explore Minnesota tourism bill.
Perhaps Heintzeman can explain to his anti-marriage equality base why co-authoring a bill means that he wasn't involved in it. He also voted for HF843, which included funding for Explore Minnesota, but which was authored by Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington. (Garofalo voted for marriage equality, so there's no pious hypocrisy in this on his part).
Other than all these details about the bill and the ad campaign, Heintzeman totally has an understanding heart and no way misleds his supporters.
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