4-1 Council Decision Expands Hand Count Audit

St. Francis is 8th city in Anoka County to pass an expanded hand count audit (see 1:01:21 for vote).

St. Francis recently became the 8th city (out of 21 cities) so far in Anoka County, Minnesota to pass a resolution to expand the audit of their local elections. Nationwide and statewide, public opinion has continued to shift to a more transparent and verifiable process, from registering to casting votes to counting votes to auditing the results. This city council’s resolution focuses on the last part: auditing.

In Minnesota Statutes, specifically § 206.89, a postelection review hand count is a requirement for all counties. A certain number of precincts are randomly selected during the canvassing board meeting (several days after the general election) for a hand count audit. Strangely, the certification of the county’s election (and the local elections within it, like for city councilmembers) occur in this same meeting. In other words, the audit only comes days after the certification. This is only one of many logical flaws in the current legislation regarding election audits in Minnesota. (Consider Oak Grove, whose council on a separate matter was the first to cancel its electronic poll pad agreement with Anoka County prior to the 2024 election.)

Voters in St. Francis may welcome their board’s decision, however just because a resolution was passed does not mean anything will happen. The final authority for this decision—on whether St. Francis’s two precincts (including down ballot races) will get hand count audited—rests with the Anoka County Canvassing Board, a 5-member board that meets several days after general election day, 2026.

Back in 2024, this board decided to ignore the requests of 7 cities which had collectively asked for 17 precincts to be audited.

(The board did increase the total number of precincts to be audited, from 4 to 8, out of 128 precincts in Anoka County. No board member spoke in that meeting about why the 7 cities requests were ignored and the increase from 4 to 8—from the total pool of 128—seemed to be a backroom-type deal that was prearranged for appeasement purposes. No comments or questions were allowed from the public during this meeting, although some people made comments, speaking over the assistant attorney.)

Minnesota’s audits, despite rhetoric to the contrary, are weak. For just one example, primary elections do not even include a post election review hand count. General elections do, where less than 1% of all ballot positions (ovals) are checked. Never in Minnesota’s history has a down ballot race been part of a post election review, to my knowledge (though some have been hand counted as part of required recounts for close races).

Why the tiptoeing around this issue from the 5-member board in 2024? Why the SOS influence, including letters to places outside Anoka such as Big Lake (Sherburne), or phone calls with townships in Washington County, expressing disinterest or flat out saying these additional audits could not be done?

Nowhere in the Minnesota Statutes does it say additional precincts or additional races (down ballot: like city councilmember) cannot be audited. In fact, in Minn Stat. § 206.89, the plain language of the statutes clearly states the opposite: it affirms the canvassing board’s ability to call for additional audits, just as the 7 cities had requested in Anoka County in 2024 AND the inclusion of down ballot races.

For me, it shouldn’t come down to 5 people saying ‘No’ to additional audits, which were clearly in high demand. If a city wants to audit its elections, and has the manpower to do it, what’s the harm? (Legislation in 2024 made immediate hand counting on election night out of bounds.) And that demand is increasing with now St. Francis being added to the list—nearly half (8 of 21) cities are now interested in checking their ballots and votes. St. Francis wants 2 out of 2 precincts checked, including all the down ballot races.

My guess is that as more voters learn how insufficient (and clever) the current audit process is, that truly auditing elections will become a non-partisan demand. Else, as the saying goes, ‘the house always wins’. We can flip that to, ‘every voter wins’ by doing thorough audits of local elections.

Bigger picture, geographically Anoka County wedges into Hennepin and Ramsey County and the Mississippi River flows through the southwestern part of Anoka into its neighboring counties. What happens at the most local level upstream may one day flow downstream, affecting legislation and lawmaker votes on important and much-needed election reform bills in St. Paul.