County caught illegally staffing ballot boards. The headline from KSTP-TV,
Supreme Court rules Hennepin County Absentee Ballot Board must comply with state law in choosing election judges by Nov. 1
The Star Tribune headline is a little more specific,
Minnesota Supreme Court says Hennepin County incorrectly picked GOP absentee board judges
County elections officials will email prospective judges from GOP list Wednesday to see if they want to serve as absentee board judges.
Which means that Hennepin County has not been complying with state law for 41 days of the 46-day state election “season.”
To comply with the order from the state Supreme Court, the County sent out this email to prospective election judges for the absentee ballot board this morning.
Note that the county also emailed Democrats.
A total of four days remain for Hennepin County to get into compliance with the law. As a practical matter it’s already far too late. As the Star Tribune reports in its story, quoting state Republican party chair David Hann,
He noted that so far this election cycle, 263,435 absentee ballots have been received by the county and 209,306 were accepted by the absentee ballot board.
The Star Tribune observes that the county has some 815,000 registered voters. So 1/3 of the county’s voters have already voted absentee. And 1/4 of the county’s total votes have already been accepted by an illegal ballot board.
Move along. Nothing to see here.