An update on the investigation of Minnesota Majority’s report

Two weeks ago, the story broke about Minnesota Majority’s investigation alleging that felons, possibly by the hundreds, had illegally voted in Hennepin and Ramsey counties in the 2008 election. Some of the news coverage suggested that the Hennepin County Attorney’s office was not taking the allegations seriously or was dragging its feet in its investigation of the Minnesota Majority’s report.

These allegations are serious – going to the very heart of our democratic process. The integrity of our elections in Minnesota took a big hit already when we learned how inconsistently absentee ballots were counted throughout the state. To suggest that hundreds of felons illegally voted on top of that would seriously damage citizens’ faith in Minnesota’s ability to run fair and clean elections.

Over the course of the past week, I’ve spoken with Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman and his Deputy County Attorney who handles election fraud cases several times. Here’s the scoop regarding HennCo’s actions with respect to these allegations:

Last week, the county board voted 6-1 (I was the “no” vote) in support of a county request to the Legislative -Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (“LCCMR”) to fund a proposed $700,000 county program called UrbanWatch. The program purportedly would support environmental education for at-risk kids in North Minneapolis and at the Hennepin County Home School, a facility for juveniles who have committed crimes.

The kicker: $600,000 of this public money would be spent to help kids plant and maintain 40 gardens in the urban core of Minneapolis and at the Home School. In other words, we would be spending $15,000 each for 40 “community gardens” in the name of environmental education.