Bringing the suit were Minnesota Majority employees Jeffrey Davis and Daniel McGrath; Republican legislators Tom Emmer, Mark Buesgens and Matt Dean; chairman of the Minnesota Republican Liberty Caucus David FitzSimmons; self-described “Republican activist and campaign worker for about 25 years” Jean Sanford and Carver County Republican activist Cindy Pugh.

The Supreme Court said that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the case.

“Here you have a major U.S. Senate race being decided by just a few hundred votes, and along comes our case citing the fact that the secretary of state has been unable to account for tens of thousands of voters in the 2008 election,” Minnesota Majority president Jeffrey Davis said in a press release. “You can see why the court might not want to touch this case with a 10-foot pole.”

But the court said the plaintiffs “neither describe nor identify any wrongful acts, omissions or errors of respondents concerning a specific election as required” by Minnesota statute. It added that they requested “no relief specific” to the 2008 election, noting that even if they had tied it to the election, the window for contesting the election has passed.

Ritchie praised the decision. “On behalf of all dedicated election officials who help administer the best election system in the country, I thank the Minnesota Supreme Court for its careful and judicious review of this lawsuit and its decision to dismiss it,” he said in a statement this on Thursday. “We agree with the court’s findings that Minnesota Majority neither described nor identified any wrongful acts, omissions or errors, and we concur with the court’s decision to reject the lawsuit.”

Al Franken’s campaign claims it now holds a 22-vote lead in the U.S. Senate race with just 138,000 votes left to be recounted. This figure contrasts with other tabulations, based on numbers from the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office, that show Coleman maintaining a 303-vote lead.

The Franken numbers differ in a couple of respects from the SOS data. Most importantly the Democratic camp’s vote tally relies on the call made by local election officials in determining which candidate an individual intended to support. By contrast the other tallies don’t take into consideration the roughly 6,000 ballots that have been challenged by both campaigns. In addition, the Franken campaign’s figures include recount data that came in after the SOS’s 8 p.m. daily deadline for posting information.

Marc Elias, the Franken campaign’s lead recount attorney, stated at a press conference today that he believes an overwhelming majority of the challenges will ultimately be ruled to be without merit. “Thus when we set out internally to decide how we track the results thus far, we assume that all of the challenges, on both sides, will be overruled by the canvassing board,” he noted, “and that the judgment of the neutral, non-partisan election official at the counting table will be upheld.”

Elias also announced that the Franken campaign intends to rescind 633 challenges that it has determined are without merit. Unless the Coleman campaigns takes similar action, this means that Coleman’s lead as tabulated using the SOS figures will likely grow when the new figures are released this evening. As of last night the Republican’s campaign had challenged 183 more ballots than its Democratic counterpart.

The final four counties — Winona, Rock, Redwood and Wright — began their recounts today. The entire process is expected to conclude by Friday.

Mary Kiffmeyer in her salad days, as Minnesota secretary of state.

Former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer may not be in the business of supervising elections anymore, but it doesn’t mean she and her friends have abandoned their old habits.

The “traditional values” organization of which Kiffmeyer is the executive director, Minnesota Majority, has been poking around Minnesota’s voter-registration file, and in a pair of letters to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office over the past week, MN Majority president Jeff Davis claims to have unearthed thousands of suspicious registrations in the state’s voter records.

Last Friday Secretary of State Mark Ritchie held a press conference to address those issues and to debunk the implication that Minnesota’s electoral system — which has been acknowledged by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission as one of the best in the country — is rife with fraud and inaccuracy. The SoS office’s response elicited a second letter from Minnesota Majority that said, in effect, “not good enough.” (All the correspondence in the matter is reproduced in PDF format at the end of this story.)

Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann, who responded to the letter in writing on behalf of the SoS’s office, tells MnIndy that such are a tactic to scare away voters. It’s a system created by Republican operatives that’s been in place for decades: Challenge voters in mostly minority areas or, as is the case with Minnesota Majority, launch a media campaign in an effort to allege voter fraud and limit political participation in strictly Democratic-leaning precincts. And Gelbmann notes that similar campaigns are springing up statewide as a partisan machination to suppress votes.

“It’s pretty clear that it’s a strategy by a number of groups to cast doubt about the integrity of our system,” Gelbmann says. “Yet Minnesota has one of the best systems for verification in the country. This is a very deliberate effort to start raising questions. Their aim is to keep people from voting.”

Yet even if Minnesota Majority’s claims appear specious at best, they are a likely harbinger of the kind of voter challenges that will come from organizations like Kiffmeyer’s on Election Day.

“Vacant addresses”: different from “vacant homes”

Kiffmeyer–the woman Hennepin County commissioner Mike Opat once called “probably the least competent person to hold this important office in Minnesota history—was voted out of SoS in 2006. She then joined Minnesota Majority as its executive director.

The religious-right organization is mostly dedicated to culture-war tubthumping; the “Issues” tab on its website includes “Illegal Aliens,” “Homosexual ‘Marriage’,” “Comprehensive Sex Education, “Embryonic Stem Cell Research” and “Climate Change.” The group is probably best known for a claim, published last year on its website, that Swedes had a lower infant mortality rate because they were “racially pure.” Kiffmeyer is now running for a state legislative seat in District 16B.

In the letter to Ritchie’s office, Minnesota Majority President Jeff Davis says the results of the organization’s analysis “suggest that there may be broad-based integrity problems in the Minnesota voter registration file.” Among the principal claims, Davis states that in 2004 and 2006 there were 10,099 voters in Anoka and Hennepin Counties who now reside at “vacant addresses.”

“Vacant addresses” is a nebulous term. After the 2004 election, Minnesota outlawed the practice of building voter caging lists compiled from returned mail sent by a political party. But the law does not preclude organizations like Minnesota Majority from using a special portion of the Postal Service’s database to challenge the validity of voter information, or from showing up at the polls to intimidate voters in urban communities.

Minnesota Majority says that in order to find voters living at “vacant addresses,” it used the United States Postal Service Delivery Sequence File (DSF2) to determine address verification. According to Anchor Computer, a company that sells DSF2 database system, the software is designed to reduce the mailing costs associated with undeliverable mail.

According to the company, addresses must exactly match those in the system to be verified, or they will be marked as “undeliverable” or “vacant address” by the DSF2 database. That means a single mailer, like a catalog, for example, with missing information such as an apartment number could be returned as “vacant address.” Furthermore, in a case study for a catalog mailer conducted by Anchor Computer, nearly 1 percent of the addresses on the catalogs received a “vacant address” error.

Gelbmann counters that if the 10,099 people in question voted in 2004 and 2006, then their registrations were verified by the SoS office. Whenever anyone registers, Gelbmann says, the county auditor’s office sends out a non-forwardable postcard to the registrant’s address to ensure they live at the listed address. If the postcard is returned to the county attorney’s office, the voter is challenged at the poll and required to show ID and address verification.

“One of the frustrations with Minnesota Majority’s claims is that they are reiterating the same claims they made last week without providing documentation,” says Gelbmann. ”We addressed their concerns last week and explained how the system works. We do not make public the names that will be challenged at the polls, but there are tens of thousands of people who are on are list who will be challenged and asked to provide verification. We have a long history of having one of the best systems for verification in the country,” he says. “People should not be concerned about voter fraud in Minnesota.”

A history of disenfranchising voters?

In 2004, right before the election, then-Secretary of State Kiffmeyer came under national scrutiny. In September of 2004, Kiffmeyer issued a press release outlining Minnesota’s plans — in conjunction with the Bush administration’s Department of Homeland Security — to combat “homicide bombers.” Included were what Kiffmeyer’s office said were telltale signs of a potential disruption or homicide bomber: cars “riding low with springs,” persons exuding “unexplained or unusual odors.” (”Smells may range from fruity/flowery,” the missive noted, “to sharp/pungent, garlic/horseradish-like, bitter almonds, peach kernels and new mown grass/hay.”)

As the Washington Post noted at the time, several election officials were outraged by the fliers the SoS’s office created, refusing to distribute them on the grounds that they discouraged voting and singled out voters of religious, racial, or ethnic groups for harassment.

That same year, Kiffmeyer also attempted to enact a law that would have forbidden Indians living outside a reservation to use their tribal cards to register to vote on Election Day. After a civil rights lawsuit was filed, Kiffmeyer eventually agreed to allow the tribal cards to be used.

Despite Kiffmeyer’s past or her organization’s current attempts at disenfranchising voters via, so far, mostly media blasts, Gelbmann says there’s a safety net in place to ensure all voters are legitimate, though he acknowledges nothing is foolproof.

“No system that’s trying to get 3.2 million people out to vote is error-free,” he says. The SOS’s office has a new campaign this year, 80 percent in ‘08. It’s hoping to have record voter turnout, despite attempts to halt the process. “There’s a lot of scare tactics out there, like people saying if your house is being foreclosed on you can’t vote,” Gelbmann says. “But that is entirely not true. And we hope everyone comes out and votes this year and sees this. [Minnesota Majority's] aim is to keep people from voting. That’s why we held a press conference and brought our frontline employees to ensure everyone that this system is as good as any human system can be.”

The ACORN factor

While Gelbmann says people should not be concerned about voter fraud in Minnesota, there’s no doubt people on all sides of the political spectrum are indeed concerned. MnIndy’s sister site, Michigan Messenger, reported in September that a GOP official in that state affirmed a plan to challenge voters living at addresses for which there were foreclosure filings. The GOP official subsequently denied making the statement.

And there is further reason for real consternation. In 2004 in Ohio, a state that’s once again up for grabs and shows all signs of becoming contentious, the GOP sent out “do not forward” mailers. The returned mail resulted in more than 35,000 voters being challenged.

Gelbmann acknowledges that the scandal surrounding voter registration efforts by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has given more visibility to partisan scare rhetoric about vote fraud. John McCain recently called the nonprofit organization, whose voter-registration program turned up fake voters, a “threat to the fabric of our democracy.” The organization has admitted that some voter-registration forms it collected throughout the country are invalid.

Gelbmann says that here in Minnesota, in 2006, ACORN was also paying its employees for each new voter-registration form they collected. The result was that false voter-registration cards were created for people who don’t exist. Yet Gelbmann says that those voters have either been removed or added to the “challenge” list after cards sent by the respective county auditor’s offices were returned.

“ACORN was paying people for every voter they registered,” Gelbmann says. “Unfortunately, they had some people who were employed who weren’t very honest and created fake voter-registration cards out of an incentive to get paid. But that person isn’t going to try to vote. They don’t exist. The only reason they got on that list as a fake name is because someone wanted to make money.”

ACORN acknowledges some of its employees created false voter-registration cards. In a letter published this week by the San Francisco Chronicle, the chair of California ACORN, says, “the small percentage of problematic cards that we have submitted to local election boards in 2008 — and that we are required by law to submit, even cards that we can plainly see are invalid — will not result in any illegal voting, contrary to over-the-top partisan claims. The irony in these attacks is that our registration drive and get-out-the-vote program is nonpartisan.”

Yet ACORN wasn’t the only organization paying employees per new voter registration. Employees of an organization called Young Political Majors (YPM) were paid $7 to $12 per registered Republican voter, many of whom signed up, according to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, because they believed they were signing petitions for stricter penalties against child molesters.

As a result of these practices, in 2008 Minnesota made it illegal to pay for voter registrations. And Gelbmann reiterates that regardless of partisan politics and voter schemes, “phantom voters” will not be showing up to the polls and posing a threat to Minnesota’s voting system — because they simply don’t exist.

More:

Minnesota Majority’s letter to the Secretary of State’s office (PDF)

SoS office’s reply (PDF)

Minnesota Majority’s second letter (PDF)

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie says state law makes it tough on would-be vote cagers.

It’s that time again.

In the past couple of weeks, the thoughts of the left-lib blogosphere have turned back to fears of voter harassment and disenfranchisement schemes of the sort that made headlines in 2000 and 2004. The discussion is driven in part by a story that our sister site the Michigan Messenger broke on September 10, when reporter Eartha Jane Melzer wrote that one GOP county chair there was “planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.” (Today Melzer updates that story with news that House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers has asked the Justice Department to investigate those claims.)

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie says election laws here–specifically, the state’s same-day registration policy, along with a few key reforms enacted after conflicts over partisan voter challenges in the state’s 2004 election–make it much more difficult for partisans to game the system by constructing specious grounds for residency challenges or by mounting wholesale objections that serve to slow polling lines and discourage would-be voters.

I spoke to Ritchie late last Friday. Of the post-2004 reforms, he says, “First, challengers have to be from Minnesota and to show proof of residency. Second, challengers can only make challenges based on personal knowledge, and they must put those challenges in writing. This really changes it from being a kind of harassment. We knew that many of the challenges were being done in the past basically to make the lines move slowly so that some voters would get disgusted, or just have to run, because they’ve got to get the kids or get to work.

“But also [we knew] that challenges create a form of harassment or of personal anxiety that then drove some voters away from the polls. Now, with these new requirements, Minnesota law has made challenging an activity that we do not believe discourages or inappropriately keeps people from voting.”

Here’s a transcript of the whole interview.

Minnesota Independent: As we get closer to election day, worries about efforts to interfere with the exercise of voting rights are coming front and center again, as they have in the past few elections. Our sister site, Michigan Messenger, reported recently that Michigan were allegedly planning to use mortgage foreclosure rolls who have lost or are losing their homes in that state. (The Michigan GOP denies this.) What I wanted to ask you is, what’s the state of the law concerning the legitimate or illegitimate mounting of challenges to someone’s right to vote in Minnesota?

Mark Ritchie: We had a very bad situation a few years ago with challengers being flown in from Texas, the Department of Justice–there were some fistfights that broke out, and everywhere in the state there seemed to be discord that was created by these challengers. So the Legislature in 2005, on a bipartisan basis, changed Minnesota law to reform the process of challenges. In the 2006 election, the law changes seemed to solve some of the worst abuses and really, I think, made our situation and our election process the best in the country.

Here’s some of the things in our Minnesota law. First, challengers have to be from Minnesota and to show proof of residency. Second, challengers can only make challenges based on personal knowledge, and they must put those challenges in writing. This really changes it from being a kind of harassment. We knew that many of the challenges were being done in the past basically to make the lines move slowly so that some voters would get disgusted, or just have to run, because they’ve got to get the kids or get to work. But also [we knew] that challenges create a form of harassment or of personal anxiety that then drove some voters away from the polls.

Now, with these new requirements, Minnesota law has made challenging an activity that we do not believe discourages or inappropriately keeps people from voting.

MnIndy: So, for example, a scheme such as the one alleged in Michigan would be impossible here as I hear you describe the changes to the law.

Ritchie: I don’t know all the details of the Michigan scheme, but I can tell you that somebody could not just come in with a list of foreclosed homes and challenge voters in that way. But Minnesota also has a safety net. Problems can arise in elections from human error, computer mistakes–all kinds of things can happen. Our system of same-day registration means that if somebody has lost their home and had to move to a hotel or to some other residence, and they haven’t had time to get in and change their registration, they can come in on election day, register right there on the spot at their new [address]. They can have someone vouch for them, or maybe they’ve got a utility bill or some other means of showing they’re resident there.

So not only have we changed the law to stop the abuse of challenges. We also have the same-day registration safety net, which means that if someone, for any reason, doesn’t end up on a voter roster in a polling place, they can still register and vote and thus are not denied their constitutional right to vote just because they’ve lost their home to a foreclosure or some other legal process.

MnIndy: Do you expect partisan challengers to be out in force at polling places this year?

Ritchie: We expect all the major parties to have people in the polls. They typically do. We also expect those partisan challengers to be very polite, to follow our law, and to be helpful. We do not expect the kind of harassment, picking of fights, calling police–all the things we suffered in the past. But we will be monitoring this closely and making sure there’s no inappropriate behavior.

We have 4,000 polling places, 30,000 volunteers, community leaders and others serving as poll workers and election judges. It’s a big system, and we’ll be working hard to make sure it’s smooth and fast. We know it’ll be the biggest turnout in our lifetimes, so we know we’ll have a lot of new people at the polls. We want to make sure it’s as smooth as it can be and that no partisan challengers or partisan staff, or [people] who might attempt to disrupt the process as a mechanism for disempowering voters–we want to make sure none of that will happen in Minnesota.

MnIndy: What will your office be doing on election day in real time to make sure that any controversies or allegations of obstruction are dealt with in a timely way?

Ritchie: The procedure is normally that an election judge who has a question or sees a situation–unless they need to call the police–will call their city clerk or their county auditor about any problems. Then that clerk or auditor would contact our office for clarification or specific information about an issue. We will field hundreds, if not thousands, of calls during the course of the day. Many will be voters wondering where they vote or what they need to register on election day.

If there are some calls that have to do with disruptions, or behavior that’s potentially disenfranchising voters in a particular precinct, we will act quickly. We’ll be in touch with the county attorney or with law enforcement. Also, if there is a disruption that potentially closes or reduces access to a polling place, we can go to a district court judge and ask for an extension of the hours at that polling place. We don’t expect those kinds of problems. We have serious laws, and law enforcement is on top of this.

We don’t have a crystal ball, but we can be very responsive the minute we hear from anybody about problems.

MnIndy: Has Minnesota had issues with the kind of dirty tricks and obstructionism we’ve seen in other states in recent years? I’m thinking of things like spreading disinformation about where the polling places in an area are.

Ritchie: Notwithstanding Garrison Keillor’s admonition that we are way above average and squeaky clean, I think it’s generally accepted that Minnesota’s first election after statehood was stolen. And then it was stolen back. So we have our own history.

But in recent times, I think we’ve prided ourselves on addressing issues when they come up. So, for example, I live in Minneapolis. One year on my windshield, and those of many other cars, there was a flyer saying, it’s election day, and you vote at Sabathani Community Center. That didn’t seem unusual; Sabathani has a lot of community events. But it was absolutely never the polling place. It was Kingfield Community Center.

That kind of nuanced, deliberately deceptive misinformation does occur here. But Minnesota has taken some steps. When Congressman Keith Ellison was in the state Legislature, he led an effort that passed anti-deceptive practices laws, which provide a set of tools for election officials and law enforcement to go after those kinds of things. Now it’s a model that’s being looked at at the national level.

But we did have an incident before I became secretary of state in which there was an attempt to place posters inside polling places from Homeland Security arguing that polling places could be the target of terrorist attacks, and this is what a terrorist looks like and smells like. But the intention was to put “terror” and “terrorist” as the last idea in the mind of the voters before they walked into their blue stand and voted. This is an attempt to influence voting inside the polling place, and it’s absolutely prohibited by law.

It’s outrageous that Homeland Security or anyone else would be engaged in that kind of activity, and I have heard rumors that there’s something similar to this happening in Ohio. I’m only interested in what happens in Minnesota, in making sure we have totally free and fair elections here.

But we all are governed by one president, who is elected in 50 elections around the country. So when I hear of deceptive practices we’ve experienced here in Minnesota happening in other states, I’m concerned that we haven’t gotten to the bottom of all the deceptive practices yet. We have to be forever vigilant about these issues. Minnesota’s made important changes in the law regarding deceptive practices and challengers, and I think our law is much, much better. But we have to stay vigilant always, and that’s my intention.

MnIndy: You referred a moment ago to “the turnout of our lifetime.” How high a turnout are you expecting, and are polling places being staffed up in light of that?

Ritchie: Our goal is “80 in ‘08.” Eighty percent of eligible voters. And yes, we will have a marginal increase [in elections personnel]–keep in mind, we start out high–but we also know that any increase to that level will include a lot of new voters and young voters, and voters who haven’t voted for many years. They’ll need extra assistance, perhaps in getting registered, but also in the procedures. How do the machines work, where do you pick your ballot up?

All of the county auditors and city clerks and township officials have been thinking about this challenge since February, when the caucuses had such huge turnout. They’ve been preparing by recruiting extra election judges and poll workers. Minnesota has special laws that allow 16- and 17-year-olds to be poll worker trainees. They can’t do everything, but they can provide important helpers in the process. We’re also making sure we’ve got adequate numbers of ballots.

Our citizens are also aware of this coming crush of voters, and I see a big uptick in people registering early, and people choosing the vote-by-mail option, which we used to call absentee voting. Folks are calling to say, when can I go to my city clerk or county auditor’s office and vote in person? That will start on October 3. Lots of people are ordering those vote-by-mail ballots as well. All this can help reduce the lines on election day itself.

Here is the text of her affidavit for the Court:

I began working on Tim Walz’s campaign for the United States House of Representatives in Minnesota’s First Congressional District in March, 2006, as Campaign Manager.

Over the next four months, I contacted the Secretary of State’s office several times with general questions on how to file and specific questions regarding the rules for Nominating Petitions in Lieu of Filing Fee.

I called the Secretary of State’s office once in April 2006, two or three times in May 2006 and two or three times in June 2006.

I was told by different persons in the Secretary of State’s office on at least two occasions that Nominating Petitions in Lieu of Filing Fee require 1000 signatures and that the petition must be signed between July 4, 2006 and July 18, 2006. The written information which they sent me and that they published on the official website confirmed this.

Because I was so advised, the Walz Campaign decide [sic] to pay the $300 filing fee and not take the chance of trying to secure 1000 signatures during the filing period.

Further Affiant sayeth not.

[signed] Kerry M. Greeley

A copy of the affidavit is on p. 15 of the Supplemental Memorandum in Support for Order to Show Cause on the Louis H. Reiter vs. Mary Kiffmeyer case webpage.

The question now comes to: Was the Secretary of State’s Office playing political favorites or is it merely incompetent?

One point needs to be made, however. Rep. Gutknecht says he uses the petition instead of filing fee option to prove he is a good fiscal conservative. And yet, by filing he uses up a certain amount of the Office of the Secretary of State’s time, therefore burning taxpayer dollars. This is not a big deal. All candidates do the same thing.

Yet those who pay a filing fee at least in a token way reimburse the Secretary of State for her efforts. Gil Gutknecht does not. In other words, when Rep. Gutknecht doesn’t pay, the taxpayers must.

Okay, so this is a small issue. $300 is nothing compared to the cost of the war in Iraq (at least $1.5 billion per week) and the tax breaks for the wealthy that Mr. Gutknecht has unwaveringly supported (in the $100s of billions).

But let’s face it: Mr. Gutknecht has made a big deal about being a “fiscal conservative”, which he claims he proves each election year when he makes the taxpayers foot his filing fee.

I’m afraid that Mr. Gutknecht has become a “fiscal conservative” in name only. After 12 years in office he has become too adept in the ways of Washington and too adroit in the political game of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

“A funny thing happened to me a week ago,” writes Rep. Gil Gutknecht in an article published in the Winona Daily News, Sunday, August 20. “I was in my driveway, grilling chicken on a Saturday night when a nice man in a Jeep Liberty drove up.” The man said he was there to serve him legal papers.

Gutknecht continues, “The papers were details of a lawsuit filed to keep my name off the ballot during the September primary and, presumably, the November general election.

“I was surprised. I’d never been served before. Another thought came to mind:… ‘How much do you tip a guy who serves you with papers?’”

Despite Mr. Gutknecht’s humor, being embroiled in a lawsuit at this point of his campaign, especially over a process he’s bee doing for 12 years, must be a shock. And I can empathize. One thing that drives me crazy is being accused of something I know I’m not guilty of.

On point is obvious: The Gutknecht campaign has felt that it has been following the correct procedure in submitting a petition in place of the filing fee for his candidacy. The difficulty it’s forced to face is that Minnesota election law is ambiguous on the subject of when the signatures for the filing fee waiver petition can be collected: Actually, it simply doesn’t say.

The question that the Minnesota Supreme Court must decide is whether there is no time limit, as the Minnesota Secretary of State and the Gutknecht campaign argue, or whether the 14-day time limit for collecting signatures on filing petitions (not filing fee waiver petitions) that are applicable to non-major party endorsed candidates applies.

But is the lawsuit “a political dirty trick,” as Mr. Gutknecht contends?

One way to evaluate such charges would be to ask: Would the charge be valid if the sides were switched? In other words, would it be a “a political dirty trick” if Tim Walz submitted a petition instead of paying the filing fee and the Republicans brought the legal challenge?

The lawsuit does raise valid questions. And it’s too bad for the political process that the Minnesota legislature didn’t write a more clearly worded law. But a “political dirty trick” it is not. Call it what you will, in the long run it’s just part of the process in tweaking and improving our ever-evolving democratic system.

The court case is online here. From the case website: “Oral arguments will be heard before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 9 a.m. in Minnesota Judicial Center Room 300. Seating is first-come, first-served. The Rochester Post-Bulletin and KAAL-TV Rochester will provide the pool cameras, and Minnesota Public Radio has reserved the audio jack in the courtroom.”