Voting

To stamp out voter fraud, GOP legislators have offered a proposal that would make Minnesota’s voter-ID laws the most restrictive in the country. But according to their own party, no actual cases of voter fraud have been reported here.

As of Tuesday night, Hennepin County officials had yet to recount ballots from Minneapolis’ Precinct 1, Ward 3. But when they do, there likely won’t be as many ballots to count as there were voters who tried to cast them. Residents of a student cooperative on the University of Minnesota campus weren’t able to register at their polling place this year like they did in past elections. The problem: Election officials would not accept the same kind of proof of residency they had in the past. It remains unclear how many students were turned away — and whether their votes could have an impact in the stil up-in-the-air U.S. Senate race. Video and more after the jump.

Earlier today, three voters of Somali origin at the Brian Coyle Center in Minneapolis told me — and two told an election observer — that a translator working there was instructing people to vote for Sen. Norm Coleman.

In addition, the presence of a Coleman staffer who says he came to volunteer his services as a GOP challenger or translator also stirred controversy between election judges and challengers.

On Minneapolis’ north side, where I live, Election Day started out with long lines waiting to vote. At the Urban League and a block away at Northpoint Health & Wellness Center, voters had to wait as long as an hour and a half. Further north in Minnesota Independent editor Steve Perry’s neighborhhood, lines were nearly as long. We visited the lines and asked voters how their experience went and what issues brought them to the polls. Here’s what they had to say.

We’ve been remiss in not posting this sooner. We hope our tardiness has not resulted in the unnecessary disenfranchisement of any noble citizens out there. But please do not forget: It is illegal to vote while drunk. According to Minnesota state law, “election judges shall not permit an obviously intoxicated individual to vote or remain [...]

Outside North Minneapolis’ River of Life Church, an official polling place, a discarded copy of The Final Call newspaper this morning suggests one possible reason record numbers of voters, including many first-timers, are expected to hit the polls today. See MnIndy’s Election Day Flickr pool here.
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We’d like to hear about your voting experience today: not only how it went, but what you saw, heard, felt, thought.

Don’t know where to vote? Use the Minnesota secretary of state’s pollfinder.

MnIndy coverage of today’s voting:
Follow us, call us, talk to us on Election Day
Power outage at two St. Paul polling places
Early turnout in Minneapolis: “Wow”
Election Day morning, University of Minnesota campus: mobbed but orderly
Norm Coleman votes, expresses optimismLines everywhere: Minneapolis turning out huge numbers

At the north Minneapolis precinct where I’ve voted since 1996, 200-300 people were already in line by the time polls opened at 7:00. That’s about five times as many I’ve ever seen there bright and early.
The best commentary on the robust early turnout came from 15-month-old Peter (last pic below) — who, upon arriving with [...]

Having Election Day jitters? Problems with touch-screen voting have already been reported in West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas, and a video (after the jump) of an election official in West Virginia demonstrating a machine that just so happens to be seriously malfunctioning and flipping votes while he’s trying to showcase its validity is circling the web today. Now voters want to take action by documenting their own experiences at the voter booth, and a joint project with PBS and YouTube called “Video Your Vote” is starting to gain serious attention.

But can you film at the polls here in Minnesota? Sort of.

John McCain’s attempt to magnify allegations of voter registration fraud could mitigate the impact of a Barack Obama victory and deter black Democrats from turning out to vote in future elections.

Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) and his allies have seized on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN, which has worked to register more than 100,000 lower-income and minority voters. Some of the registrations have been faked and investigations are underway in some key states.