Challengers huddled across the street from the Dinkytown polling place. Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy

Challengers huddled across the street from the Dinkytown polling place. Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy

They went there to ensure that nobody was wrongfully turned away from a Minneapolis polling place infamous for electoral mishaps. They ended up across the street, with police threatening arrest them if they set foot inside again.

On Tuesday night, election officials accused two men at a Minneapolis polling place of disturbing the voting process. Each had been officially designated by Ward Three council candidates to keep an eye on the proceedings at the University Lutheran Church of Hope, a short walk from the heart of the University of Minnesota campus-area commercial district known as Dinkytown.

The election judges ejected the challengers at about 6 p.m. Citing witnesses’ claims about raised-voiced disruptions, police refused to allow the challengers back inside.

But it’s not the first instance of election-day mishaps there: It’s the same polling place where 133 ballots went missing last year during the Franken-Coleman U.S. Senate recount. And it’s the same site where student residents were turned away from the polls despite having proof-of-residency documents that had allowed them to register to vote there in past years.

With those troubles in mind, candidates hoping to replace incumbent Council Member Diane Hofstede posted official challengers there Tuesday. (While other states have poll watchers, Minnesota’s election law terms candidates’ representatives who monitor polling-place activity “challengers.”)

Tensions between election officials and candidate challengers came to a head after a man who owns a house across the street was twice turned away with proof of residency documents deemed inadequate for same-day registration.

William Wells, a challenger for Republican Jeffrey Cobia, says he reminded officials about the missing ballots from last fall. Ryan Ahlberg, an attorney who DFLer Allen Kathir had designated as his official challenger, asserted his right to talk to voters about their eligibility to vote.

Election judges refused comment, but Ahlberg said they argued that challengers could only object to voters’ qualifications, not discuss options for proving residency.

First two and then three police officers arrived, kicking out the challengers as well as, in due course, a pair of reporters who had been alerted to the situation by Kathir.

The conflict spilled out of the church as darkness, rain and the temperature were falling.

Two squad cars idled empty for about an hour while officers spoke by phone with city officials, occasionally emerging to ask the challengers what they intended to do next.

One challenger asked police exactly what would happen should he try to re-enter the polling place. The answer: He’d get a citizen’s arrest warrant for trespassing and a trip downtown to Hennepin County jail that would last six to eight hours.

Ironically, that challenger was Ahlberg and not the representative of candidate Melissa Hill, who ran under the “Civil Disobedience” banner. Hill told the Minnesota Independent she isn’t sure the volunteer who offered to monitor voting for her in Dinkytown ever showed up.

In the end, Kathir appointed his campaign manager, Rick Brundage, to act as challenger for the 45 minutes of voting that remained.

Ahlberg and Wells said at least four to six people attempted to vote during the course of the day but were turned away and did not return.

By Kathir’s estimate that amounted to about 10 percent of the precinct’s total turnout.

The dispute over, Kathir returned to his get-out-the-vote efforts, shuttling students from nearby blocks to the church before the 8 p.m. close of polls.

Hofstede prevailed with 1,485 first-choice votes, to Kathir’s 348 and Cobia’s 242.

Hill had 112.