It’s there, in the Dinkytown neighborhood on the edge of the University of Minnesota campus, that poll workers recorded 133 more votes than they have ballots to show for it. It’s also there that students trying to vote via Minnesota’s same-day registration process were turned away in a re-run of a major snafu at another campus polling place during the general election two years ago.

As the Minnesota Independent reported Nov. 25, residents at The Chateau student co-op highrise who tried to register at the polls on Election Day, using proof of residency issued by the building’s management office as a second form of ID, were turned away until as late as 5 p.m. For the MnIndy video accompanying that story, student Jill Stein told of returning to the polling place twice before giving up and voting at her parents’ home precinct in the suburbs. How many of the 290 students who live in The Chateau likewise made honest attempts but were ultimately unable to vote is anyone’s guess.

The Chateau fiasco is a direct descendant of a similar situation that happened nearby during the 2006 election, as Beth Fraser, government affairs director at the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, explained in an interview with MnIndy last month. Residents of the Melrose Student Suites, an off-campus housing complex in the nearby Stadium Village area, likewise pay utilities as part of their rent, and poll workers rejected documentation from the building management as a form of ID.

Just as with Chateau residents this year, students from the Melrose who tried to register at the polls in 2006 had to wait until late on Election Day to cast their ballots. That’s when Hennepin County Judge Gary Larson ruled in favor of a petition from Melrose resident and first-year U of M student Greg Shaffer. Larson ordered election officials to accept the Melrose proof of residency and to keep the polling place open an hour later. In doing so, Larson overruled a decision by then-Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer to deny the students ballots.

The case had broader repercussions. The new secretary of state who won election in 2006, Mark Ritchie, wanted to take the office in a voter-positive direction after the Kiffmeyer-era policies that sometimes emphasized voter suppression. In the wake of the Melrose decision, his office “proposed and adopted
 rule changes to allow the use of the itemized rent statement in lieu of a 
utility bill,” Fraser wrote in an e-mail to MnIndy this week. As she tells it:

In 2008, a new proof of residence was authorized specifically to address the 
challenges of registering to vote by those whose utilities are included in 
their rent: a rent statement from a resident’s landlord that itemizes their 
utilities. The statement that the Chateau originally provided did not 
suffice, because it was not addressed to the student and did not itemize 
their utility expenses. Residents of the Chateau later received a revised
statement and used it to register to vote.

But despite Ritchie’s intention to resolve this kind of polling-place problem, the new rule came as a surprise to The Chateau’s management when they found out about it on Election Day, and the result was the same for students who were unable to vote for most of the day.

How does Ritchie’s office plan to avoid yet another repeat of the problem next time? Fraser writes:

This office will work with the Minnesota Multi Housing Association and student organizations to ensure that apartment building owners and students are familiar with what is needed in a rent statement that can be used in combination with a photo ID for the purpose of Election Day Registration.

The Minnesota Daily, in an editorial this week — following a news story that, like MnIndy’s, featured Chateau resident Jill Stein — recommended just such an approach to city election officials, reminding its student readers, “Your vote should count.”

But with the lost and missing votes in Minneapolis Precinct 1, Ward 3 already playing a central role in the current recount drama, more drastic proposals for Minnesota to get its election practices right are sure to be advanced.

Indeed, one already has: Ritchie’s rival for the DFL endorsement in 2006, Christian Sande, wrote an article earlier this year urging the state to consider following Wisconsin’s example and grant responsibility for managing elections to a commission of current and retired judges. It’s a move that could involve doing away with the office of secretary of state altogether.

The problem: Election officials would not accept the same kind of proof of residency they had in the past — a letter from building management that explains Chateau residents pay for their heat and electricity as part of their rent and therefore don’t have individual utility bills. A revised letter prepared quickly after the Chateau’s office opened at 10 a.m. didn’t pass muster either. A call to the national Election Protection hotline got the Minnesota Secretary State’s office and the Minneapolis City Attorney’s office involved. Finally, at 4 p.m., after much back and forth, the Chateau office got word that within the hour election officials would accept a third version of the letter that mimicked an invoice.

But by then, some of the Chateau’s 290 residents were turned away from the polls with a letter in hand that had always worked in past years — and some weren’t able to return to vote in the final three hours the polling place was open.

How many voters might’ve been turned away is unclear. About a quarter of Chateau residents are international students who are ineligible to vote, according to the Chateau’s management office, and of the others — likewise, all students — some probably pre-registered, voted absentee or were already on the voter rolls from past elections. With the statewide recount underway in the U.S. Senate race continuing to show a gap of fewer than 200 votes between leading candidates Al Franken and incumbent Norm Coleman, every vote counts.

But the transient student population in the building includes many first-time voters or recently moved-in residents who rely on Minnesota’s same-day voting registration to exercise their franchise. One was Jill Stein, who spoke with Minnesota Independent reporters recently about her experiences on Election Day. Stein returned twice to the polling place in the morning before giving up and arranging a ride from her parents so she could cast a ballot at their home polling place in Robbinsdale.

That may seem nuts in a Minnesota election season in which it’s alleged that some candidates don’t even buy their own clothes, but consider that the Excelsior entrepreneur is competing in a contest that’s said to be among the most competitive (and expensive) in the country, with money pouring into the campaigns of the other two candidates — Democrat Ashwin Madia and Republican Erik Paulsen — from national groups. The latest poll shows Dillon’s a factor in the race. And it’s not like he isn’t asking for help with a donation form at his campaign Web site.

UPDATE: Where is the money going? Campaign manager Bruce Anderson tells the Minnesota Independent that radio ads for Dillon will air as soon as Thursday, or by next week at the latest. TV ads aren’t out of the question, Dillon tells MnIndy; he likes the idea of seeing his black-and-white “Subcommittee on Homeland Blues” Bob Dylan spoof spot – filmed on location in a Dinkytown alley — during the evening news. 

Of the self-funding total, Dillon says he considers $100,000 of the $122,000 to be a loan to his campaign. Was that the funding plan all along? “It’s all very abstract until you start getting $50, $100, $500 checks,” Dillon says, conceding that despite being a longtime policy and economics wonk, politics is new to him. “Did I hope to do more [fundraising]? Yes. But it could be worse.”

For whatever naivete he professes, Dillon said he knew even at the outset what he was butting into: a bare-knuckled, two-party struggle to replace Ramstad. The Independence Party’s ban on special interest donations wasn’t going to cut it, he realized. “Otherwise it’s like I’m going to a gun fight with a knife,” he remembered thinking, despite a previous aversion to the concept of special interest money in politics.

As it turned out, the party’s ban doesn’t extend to federal races. But Dillon’s descent into tainted special-interest cash didn’t last long anyway, and therein lies a story that explains in part his high ranking on the self-funding list.  

In January, Dillon traveled to Washington, D.C., for Homeland Security work related to federal anti-counterfeiting efforts. His business is printing, so he decided to hit up the Printing Industry of America (PIA), a trade group, for a campaign donation.

The PIA brought along representatives of a half-dozen other organizations to meet Dillon — a random group of prospects that might find his family business CEO/entrepreneur profile appealing. “The Thorasic surgeon folks were there,” Dillon recalled. So were insurance industry people — who, it turned out, held contradictory goals on whether reimbursements should go up or be held down.  

The result was the group gave Dillon of a list of 100 more prospects … and a $1,000 check. The PIA attached only a single string: It let it be known that they did not want to see the introduction of a national do-not-mail list along the lines of the national do-not-call list.  

Dillon took the check and left the room, telling himself, “Well, I’ll be damned. This is exactly how it works.” It was his first and last special interest donation, he says. He set aside the list of prospects.  ”I just couldn’t do it again.”