Election Integrity: An Experiment

[Valin]

Power Line

John Hinderaker

July 14, 2021

Election integrity is a critically important issue. In Minnesota, we have an administration and particularly a Secretary of State whose object seems to be maximizing opportunities for fraud. We have same-day registration, but no provisional balloting. This means people vote first, and we try to find out whether they are actually qualified after it is too late. Counties send post cards to same-day registrants who can’t verify their names and addresses to see whether they come back as undeliverable. The Minnesota Voters Alliance sued to obtain these and other records from the Secretary of State, but Minnesota’s Supreme Court held that he can keep them secret. So American Experiment decided to conduct our own experiment. In this article, from the upcoming issue of Thinking Minnesota, Communications Director Bill Walsh reveals the results of our experiment and more broadly addresses issues of ballot security in Minnesota.

One of the many ways our nation remains divided is over election integrity. One side has serious doubts about who’s voting — and who’s counting the votes. The other side calls such doubts a “Big Lie” and expends a lot of energy trying to silence claims of voter fraud. Never mind that successful fraud, by definition, goes undetected.

In Minnesota the matter is made worse because Secretary of State Steve Simon refuses to release challenged voter lists, despite widespread support for stronger voting laws. February’s Thinking Minnesota poll found that 69 percent of Minnesotans favor a photo ID requirement at the polls. Only 28 percent are opposed. The same poll showed that one-third of respondents lack confidence in election integrity, a shocking number in a state that leads the nation every year in voter turnout. But Simon called the 2020 election a “tremendous success” and dismissed claims to the contrary as “foolish and irresponsible” and “unworthy of attention.”

Center of the American Experiment worked with the Minnesota Voters Alliance to shine some light on the weakest part of Minnesota’s election system, election day registration. Call it the American Experiment Voter Integrity Project.

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