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Minnesota law dictates that the validity of absentee ballots be evaluated in a bipartisan fashion. The law requires each county and other authority “with responsibility to accept and reject absentee ballots or to administer early voting” to “establish a ballot board.” Ballot boards must consist of election judges. Each party provides the county with a Party List, and county authorities are required to use these Party Lists to recruit election judges.

In 2022, the Minnesota Supreme Court specifically held that the Party List requirement applies to the appointment of ballot boards, and that “[t]he governing body may appoint election judges not appearing on the major party lists only after it has exhausted the candidates on the list.” For reasons I cannot explain, Hennepin County, the state’s largest county and the main center of DFL power, did not follow the law and did not use the Republican Party’s List in identifying members of the county’s ballot board. In fact, not a single member of that List was appointed. The Minnesota GOP learned this only after filing a public data request, and the Minnesota Voters Alliance, represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center, the public interest law firm on whose board I serve, sued.

On Tuesday, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Hennepin County’s failure to appoint ballot judges from the Republicans’ Party List was illegal–plainly illegal, in fact, after the Court’s 2022 decision. The Court’s Order requires Hennepin County “to comply with this duty to exhaust the Republican Party List by Friday, November 1, 2024.”

It is noteworthy that, while this case appears to be open and shut, Minnesota’s Secretary of State, Steve Simon, sided with Hennepin County, arguing that the county did not need to appoint any ballot judges off the Republican Party List. It sometimes appears that Simon views his principal responsibility as Secretary of State to be the facilitation of voter fraud on behalf of the Democratic Party.

While the Supreme Court’s vindication of Minnesota election law is welcome, it may not have much impact. My American Experiment colleague Bill Glahn explains:

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.

Sometimes it pays to be a scofflaw.