Mahoumad Wardere (in red) talks to voter at Brian Coyle Center

(Updated at 8:19 p.m.) Today I was interviewed by WCCO’s Esme Murphy about my story regarding voter allegations of illegal activity and intimidation at Brian Coyle Center yesterday. The main issue, as we reported yesterday, was that a campaign staffer for Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, Mahamoud Wardere, was on hand nearly the entire day, at least from 11 a.m. till past 3 p.m., acting as an interpreter and/or challenger. And a handful of voters — at least three to me and two to an election observer — complained that interpreters were telling people to vote for Coleman.

At the end of her report, Murphy noted that Coleman’s campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan, said Wardere did nothing wrong. He was only there to act as an interpreter, Sheehan said, and he had a “Republican attorney with him at all times.”

Yet that’s not the entire story.

As I noted in my report yesterday, Wardere was reluctant to give me his name at first. Wardere was asked by one of the election judges to leave the gymnasium where voters were casting their ballots, and I went in the adjacent room where Wardere sat to ask him what happened. Wardere told me he was not sure of his role — if he was called in to be a GOP challenger or an interpreter. Wardere and a GOP challenger were in the gymnasium together for at least an hour before an election judge determined that his role was unclear and reiterated that only one challenger representing either party could be at the polls. Wardere explicitly stated to me that the Republican challengers at Brian Coyle Center called him in, and he added, “I am not sure what is happening, and until I know and the city knows what my role is I would rather not give you my name or what I am doing because I do not know.”

Wardere only gave me his name after I learned from voters that he was a staffer from Coleman’s office, and I made a phone call to my editor, Steve Perry, to determine his name. At that point, I confronted Wardere about his role in Coleman’s office, and he told me he was “on vacation” and that he was at the polling place only to help with language issues. He denied telling voters how to cast their ballots. And he remained at Brian Coyle Center for at least four hours, chatting up voters in the foyer of the center and outside the main entrance.

You can watch video of Murphy’s story here.

Update: KSTP also followed up on the story MnIndy broke yesterday. According to an interview the station did with local Somali leader Omar Jamal, the Somali Advocacy Center is looking into allegations of voters being pressured to vote for both Coleman and DFL challenger Al Franken. While both are very serious allegations, the only complaints I encountered from voters at Brian Coyle, as my original story noted, were that voters were being persuaded to vote for Coleman. And while Wardere, who worked as both a translator and challenger at the site and remained there throughout the afternoon, is also a paid Coleman staffer, I did not encounter anyone at the center who was known to work for Franken’s campaign.