In an interview with Stateline, Kansas Secretary of State-elect Kris Kobach said that Minnesota’s Secretary of State Mark Ritchie committed a “heist” in the recount election of Sen. Al Franken. A Republican, Kobach ran on a platform of eliminating voter fraud and was — as Stateline notes — “the intellectual architect of Arizona’s S.B. 1070, the tough-on-illegal-immigrants legislation signed into law in that state last year.” Ritchie, whose work with the bipartisan canvassing board in the Coleman-Franken recount was praised by many, was handily reelected by voters in 2010.

According to Stateline:

Kobach called the 2008 Minnesota recount that led to Democrat Al Franken’s narrow U.S. Senate victory a “pseudo-election.” He also attacked Minnesota’s Democratic secretary of state, Mark Ritchie, for playing “a pivotal role in the heist — manipulating the process to pacify a leftist mob.”
Kobach went on to argue that “the problem is only going to get worse, unless the country’s secretaries of state take the necessary steps to protect the integrity of our elections. The threat is real, and time is short.”

In Kansas, Kobach “would be transforming the model (of the secretary of state office) somewhat, from a ministerial model to more of a law enforcement model.”

Ramsey, Anoka and Hennepin counties as well as Mark Dayton’s legal team and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie have filed paperwork arguing against the Republican Party of Minnesota’s Supreme Court challenge alleging phantom votes and asking for a reconciliation of voter sign-ins with ballots in all 4,130 precincts in the state. All parties argue that precincts followed procedures that have been in place since 1982.

Election judges count the number of voter receipts and compare them to the number of ballots to ensure that no ballots have counted twice. The Emmer team wants all precincts in the state to go back and count precinct rosters where voters sign in on election day and compare those to the number of ballots instead. But, elections officials say that they’ve followed a modern interpretation of the law.

“Although Minnesota Statutes section 204C.20, subdivision 1, continues to refer to voter’s certificates that are no longer in use, Rule 8700.9300, subpart 10, allows election judges to determine the number of ballots to be counted by reference to either the number of voter’s receipts or signatures on the polling place roster,” wrote Ritchie in a filing with the court. “Furthermore, Petitioner’s supporting affidavits do not substantiate any claim that the reported election results are inaccurate. In fact, the petition does not suggest any reason why the use of voter receipts is more likely to generate errors than using the (now obsolete) certificates, or roster signatures.”

Hennepin County argued that the current manner of reconciling ballots is more accurate than the manner the Emmer team is arguing for.

“There is no requirement to compare the ballot total from the summary statement to a count of the number of signatures on the polling place rosters,” read the Hennepin County brief. “In 1982, a Minnesota Rule was added that authorized elections officials to use either the number of names om the polling place roster or the number of voter’s receipts when determining the number of ballots to be counted.”

The brief continued, “Voter’s receipts are a more accurate method for counting the number of voters than having election judges counting thousands of signatures from polling place rosters at the end of election night.”

Hennepin County also said that Emmer’s line of attack would disenfranchise voters.

“Any additional reconciliation lacks any factual support and would serve only to add confusion, delay, and uncertainty in the service of an exceedingly suspect goal of randomly removing properly cast ballots of fully eligible voters.”

Cynthia Reichert, elections manager for Anoka County, said her county only had one more ballot than receipt that couldn’t be explained by human or machine error, according to court documents. The county argued that tossing out that one vote, or many votes, would disenfranchise voters.

“There can be no reasonably based allegation that that ballot was not cast by a legal voter,” Anoka County wrote in the brief. “And any attempt to nullify that vote would only act to disenfranchise an Anoka County voter.”

Ramsey County said Emmer’s argument is flawed.

“The petitioners’ argument is fundamentally flawed because they rely on a statute that uses obsolete language that is inconsistent with modern election day practices,” according to a filing with the court.

Dayton’s campaign echoed those sentiments. “Relying on flawed arguments that could and should have been raised well in advance of the election, Candidate Tom Emmer now petitions this Court in an eleventh-hour effort to disrupt and delay the Canvassing Board certification process through the unwarranted disenfranchisement of voters,” Dayton’s legal team wrote. “This effort should be denied.”

Dayton’s team also had strong words for Emmer in a press release on Friday. “By bringing this up now, they’re acting like a four-year-old who just lost playing Candyland — they want to change the rules when they find out they lost. That’s not how elections work in Minnesota,” said Dayton recount director Ken Martin. “We play by the rules.”

The Minnesota Supreme Court is expected to take the issue up on Monday.

Fox 9 News anchor Heidi Collins’ seven-minute interview with Secretary of State Mark Ritchie Wednesday night has drawn fire from media critics for her combative tone. Collins attacked Ritchie for connections to the now-defunct ACORN and appeared to blame him for the close race between gubernatorial candidates Tom Emmer and Mark Dayton.

The Pioneer Press called the exchange “a bit uncomfortable to say the least,” while Bob Collins at MPR said it was the “most controversial TV interview in the Twin Cities from this week’s election.” As Kevin Hoffman at City Pages wrote, “Collins uncorked an insanely hostile interview” that left “some viewers questioning her judgment and fairness.”

“Collins may want to make a rep as the toughest interview in town, and tough interviews are sorely needed,” wrote MinnPost’s David Brauer. “Still, this one fell short of professional standards.”

At one point, Collins interrupted a calm, deliberative Ritchie while he was trying to defend himself from the accusation of ACORN connections lobbed at him by state GOP chair Tony Sutton. Speaking over her guest, Collins said, “Secretary Ritchie? Could I ask the questions? I ask, you answer. Yes?”

Then she appeared to blame him for the close election between Emmer and Dayton.

“You told me that it seemed like you were ready for this, prepared for this type of thing to happen. I think if voters hear that right now, they’re going to be saying, ‘What? Are you kidding me? You knew this was going to happen again? You were prepared for it?’”

Star Tribune media critic Neal Justin called this exchange “Collins’ greatest sin.”

“Collins’ tone makes it sound like that’s a BAD thing, even as Ritchie tries to explain that recounts are actually quite frequent in Minnesota and that, of course, they’re prepared,” he wrote.

Brauer noted other questionable actions by Fox 9 in recent weeks, including publishing rumors hyped by Minnesota Democrats Exposed blogger Luke Hellier. Those rumors never were verified as having factual merit.

While Brauer gave the station props for its election night coverage, he added this warning:

“[A]s it bids for attention, Fox 9 is risking its credibility.”

Collins joined the Fox 9 team following the departure of Robyne Robinson, who left to run for lieutenant governor. She was formerly a reporter with CNN.

Mark Ritchie, who oversaw the contentious recount in the 2008 U.S. Senate race between Sen. Al Franken and former Sen. Norm Coleman, will serve another term as Secretary of State. The Associated Press called the race for Ritchie shortly after 9 p.m. At that time, Ritchie led Republican challenger Dan Severson by a margin of 58 percent to 37 percent, with 15 percent of precincts reporting.

Severson, a state representative from Sauk Rapids, ran a campaign alleging that Ritchie helped sway the 2008 recount for Franken and said he believes there’s no such thing as separation of church and state.

Ritchie, however, touted the recount and election contest as an example of good government, noting that the Minnesota Supreme Court gave him high marks during the recount.

Ritchie also had to fend off a campaign by Minnesota Majority that alleged “massive” voter fraud during the 2008 election and an ad campaign by the Republican Party of Minnesota that argued Ritchie is too partisan for the office of Secretary of State.

The Republican Party of Minnesota criticized Secretary of State Mark Ritchie for “massive” voting machine failures across the state on Tuesday. But reporters around the state investigating the downed machines found the issue to be overheated rhetoric, not overheated machines.

The GOP contends that ballot scanning machines in eight precincts have malfunctioned. But according to MinnPost, the Associated Press told the party that they investigated three of the eight instances of broken machines and found that there were no ongoing problems in those three polling places.

And the Capitol Report, a blog of Forum Communications, dug even deeper. Among the problems at polling places were a power outage and an infant dropping a toy in a machine.

Capitol Report notes that in many of the several instances the machines were fixed after the first ballot was submitted.

“As you know from past experience, voting machines experience minor issues from time to time that do not disenfranchise voters but that require election judges and officials to take action,” Secretary of State Bert Black wrote to a Republican Party. “This is not new in the election process.”

Black said that all problems have been fixed.

Despite the seemingly low number of problems at Minnesota polling places on Tuesday, Fox News picked up the GOP’s story.

Minnesota media is reporting several instances of overzealous election challengers in polling places as the Republican Party of Minnesota ramps up its allegations of voter fraud. In several Minnesota precincts, reporters confirmed that GOP poll challengers have overstepped their bounds. Meanwhile, the GOP claims that ballot scanners were not working properly in some jurisdictions and that group home assistants have been telling people how to vote.

Most election experts have indicated that there haven’t been widespread reports of voter intimidation or voter fraud. As Secretary of State Mark Ritchie tweeted today, “Voter intimidation reports in MPLS but mostly it is a smooth as silk voting day”

The Associated Press reports that in Hennepin County there have been some tense conversations between election judges and GOP challengers who don’t seem to understand the rules.

Hennepin County Elections Manager Rachel Smith said that the poll challengers were entering restricted areas and making challenges that are against the rules. She told TPM, “I think we were very firm, we had to be very firm with some of the polling place challengers who wanted to have more range in the polling place than the law permitted them to.”

The Minnesota Independent received a report this morning that a poll challenger at the Emerson school in the Loring Park area of Minneapolis was challenging Somali voters. That report could not be immediately verified, however.

The Star Tribune reports that in Shakopee a GOP challenger questioned the registration of a voter because he was “too young.”

In Bloomington, the Star Tribune reports, an African American woman was asked by an election judge if she was a felon after she had already affirmed her oath. “I am an African American woman and I do believe this old Caucasian biddy was targeting me,” she told the Minneapolis paper. “Things are getting out of hand!”

Election Integrity Watch, a conservative group offering a $500 bounty for reports of voter fraud, has been bringing their “Voter Fraud. It’s a Felony,” banner to neighborhoods in St. Paul on a trailer behind a pickup truck, according to a number of Twitter reports.

Rep. Keith Ellison called the billboard “voter intimidation.”

“Minnesota residents have reported sightings of a mobile billboard driving through Minneapolis affixed with Election Integrity Watch’s poster of an individual in handcuffs, which is designed to suppress and intimidate voters,” he said. “If this proves to be true, it threatens Minnesota’s tradition of expanding the electorate and making it easy for people to participate in our voting process.”

He added, “I urge voters to stand up to Election Integrity Watch’s intimidation efforts, go to the polls, and cast your vote. There is nothing to be afraid of. If you are an eligible voter, you will be welcomed at the polls. Our state has a proud tradition of voting, and we need you to be part of it.”

On the flip side, the Minnesota GOP has been alleging voter fraud and voting machine problems.

The Star Tribune looked at one such case and found that a premarked ballot in Blaine was a simple error.

The GOP said that last week, absentee voters from an assisted living community in Crow Wing County were told how to vote by employees. Montgomery Jensen, a resident who filed an affidavit, challenged the voters’ mental disabilities and said the disability should disqualify them from voting.

The story was amplified by Fox News on Tuesday.

The GOP also alleges that “voting machines” in areas of the state have been malfunctioning. Minnesota uses scanning machines to tabulate paper ballots.

“The Republican Party of Minnesota has already received multiple reports of scanning machines failing to work in Duluth, Olmsted County, Lakeville, Faribault, Mendota Heights and Eagan,” said party chair Tony Sutton in a statement. “This is completely unacceptable. These machines should have been tested thoroughly before the election. The fact that we are seeing such failures around the state again demonstrates that Mark Ritchie has failed to properly prepare for the election, meaning Minnesotans could be disenfranchised because of Ritchie’s incompetence.”

Republican Secretary of State candidate Dan Severson has been hitting the religious right radio circuit over the past few weeks, doing interviews with headline-making figures like Bradlee Dean of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide and Pastor Brad Brandon of Berean Bible Baptist Church in Hastings. Severson told his interviewers that he believes the constitutional clause calling for the separation of church and state doesn’t exist, and that he feels there was “fraud, in a major way” in the U.S. Senate recount of 2008.

“Quite often you hear people say, ‘What about separation of church and state?’ There is no such thing,” Severson told Brandon. “I mean it just does not exist, and it does not exist in America for a purpose, because we are a Christian nation.”

He continued, “We are a nation based on Christian principles and ideals, and those are the things that guarantee our liberties. It is one of those things that is so fundamental to the freedoms that we have that when you begin to restrict our belief and our attestation to our Christian values you begin to restrict our liberties.”

He added, “You simply cannot continue a nation as America without that Christian base of liberty.”

Severson says voters must know his position on the matter.

“Look, this is what I stand for. If you don’t like that, don’t vote for me, and then the majority of the people will have their voice heard,” he said. “It’s wrong for politicians to do one thing on the campaign trail to get the vote and do exactly the opposite once they get to office. To me that is an impeachable offense.”

Severson, who has been a supporter of Minnesota’s tea party activists, made his statements days before candidate Christine O’Donnell made a similar assertion during a Delaware radio debate.

“Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” O’Donnell asked her U.S. Senate opponent, Democrat Chris Coons.

Coons said the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides for the separation: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

O’Donnell asked: “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?”

Severson also appeared on Bradlee Dean’s radio show last weekend, minutes after Dean claimed that anti-LGBT bullying advocates “are going after kids.”

Severson, who has bought tickets to the You Can Run But You Cannot Hide fundraiser at the end of the month, told Dean that the Norm Coleman–Al Franken recount was a “fraud” and that the Minnesota Supreme Court erred when it ruled that the recount could proceed. He also went after incumbent Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.

“Man, was that was a debacle,” Severson said of the recount. “I think when people saw the constant migration from Coleman going from 700-plus [votes] on election day to just a constant nipping away — in a normal recount like that you see some back and forth, some give and take, and that didn’t happen.”

He said, “And that was something Ritchie orchestrated that was no longer just a recount but a recount contest, which there was no provision in our state statutes. All those ballots that were considered? There was no statutory ability for them to do that.”

“The Supreme Court ruled in error when they made that whole process available,” he said. “The question I’d like to ask the Supreme Court is what was it that you based your ruling on?”

Severson’s campaign did not return a request for comment by the Minnesota Independent.

Here’s Severson’s interview with Brad Brandon:

Here’s Severson’s interview with Bradlee Dean:

In advance of Saturday’s League of Women Voters/KSTP debate, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie will begin airing a television ad, his first of the 2010 campaign. A straight spot, it runs down his successes on the job, from increasing voting rates among military personnel by 300 percent to overseeing the recount and election challenge in Minnesota’s 2008 Senate race between Sen. Al Franken and former Sen. Norm Coleman. “We brought integrity and fairness to the closest election in 50 years,” Ritchie says in the ad, “and the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously agreed: We got it right.”

The ad begins airing on KARE-11 this evening, Ritchie campaign manager Leah Solo tells the Minnesota Independent. She wouldn’t reveal the size of the media buy, but reminded that the campaign can only spend $214,000 for the entirety of its statewide activities. “You can draw your own conclusions from that,” she said, hinting that the ad buy would be small.

Ritchie, the DFL incumbent, is running against Republican Dan Severson. The pair debates in the KSTP studios this Saturday, with the exchange broadcast on the station on Oct. 18, 21, 26 and 30.

Watch “Integrity. Fairness.”:

—U.S. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn.

—U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen, R-Minn., Congressional District 3

—Jim Meffert, Democratic candidate for U.S. House, Congressional District 3

—Stephanie Schriock, president, EMILY’s List

—Tom Horner, Independence Party candidate for governor

—Sheldon Anderson, GOP candidate for state House, District District 15B, Wyoming

—Spoof Twitter account critical of the Alliance for a Better Minnesota

—Peggy Flanagan, director of Wellstone Action’s Native American Leadership Program, former Minneapolis School Board member

—Mark Ritchie, Secretary of State