Cast Vote Record Cover Up in Minnesota - Part 1
If your employer sent you a pay stub that seemed very low and you asked to see the time card used to calculate your wages, and your employer declined to show it to you, would you be concerned?
Jeffrey O’Donnell and Draza Smith have a repository of cast vote record (CVR) reports from around the country on ordros.com, but one state close to my heart is missing: Minnesota.
By the end of this article you’ll have a better understanding of:
- what cast vote records are
- the lengths Minnesotans have gone to acquire them from their election offices
- the continued evasion, obfuscation, and lies from those either elected or appointed to run our elections
Is it possible a system is being used to control elections at many levels, all the way down to the school board race in your home town?
You are reading Part 1 of a series on cast vote records. (Todd, Chisago, Washington)
Read Part 2 here. (Morrison, Stearns, Douglas)
Read Part 3 here. (Carver, Kanabec, Dakota)
What are cast vote records?
Cast Vote Records Can Verify Results Clearly & Very Reliable
When you put your paper ballot into the machine, it optically interprets the ovals on a bitmap. That recording is then tallied in the system and later reported.
On most tabulators, a removable media (a thumb drive) is used to transfer data to an election management system machine (another computer).
Those cast vote records can be gathered through public data requests, which we will come to.
But first… let’s look at the end result of analyzing a cast vote record.
Here’s an example from Cynthia Butler in the August 11, 2022 special meeting in Otero County, New Mexico where the cast vote record shows NO statistical evidence consistent with mail-in ballot stuffing or digital manipulation.
And here’s an example SHOWING statistical evidence consistent with mail-in ballot stuffing or digital manipulation.
Given that there were 734,000 missing absentee records only 5 days after the MN State Canvassing Board met and certified Minnesota’s 2020 General Election, one may ask why cast vote records will not be turned over which would demonstrate (at least statistically) whether or not there may be cause for concern.
Cast vote records allow the machines to tell on themselves.
Very important when the humans who have the keys are not turning them over.
Why Do We Need Cast Vote Records?
Remember that humans do not count and tally votes.
The machines do.
Risk-limiting audits, also known as postelection reviews, only check less than 1% of interpreted ovals against a hand tally, and leave out entirely many races on a ballot.
In other words, some races that voters vote on NEVER get audited.
This is the case for many “down ballot” races like school board or county commissioner.
If those races are never audited, how can election officials maintain that there was no ballot stuffing or digital manipulation? Documentaries like 2000 Mules and Selection Code have already proven this to be the case.
The people want to know to what extent either ballot stuffing or digital manipulation may have occurred in Minnesota. This is quickly becoming a bipartisan issue (it always was) as evidence by 219,000 primary voters (31.5%) voting for candidates in both the democratic and republican SOS races that were very critical of electronic voting equipment and systems.
In Minnesota, it seems that the MNDFL, the MNGOP, the election offices, and even our local county commissioners may be among the last to acknowledge the people’s desire for extreme transparency when the people’s vote and therefore the legitimacy of elections is at stake. It appears that election officials are taking their queues from the MNSOS and vendors and that commissioners are taking advice from their county attorneys. The trend has been to stall and continue hiding data that would resolve this issue once and for all.
The fact is that everything to subvert an election exists within the machines themselves, out of sight of election judges and election officials and staff.
The people are not being critical of those administering the elections per se, but rather just want to see the data collected by the machines that actually count and tally our votes.
Attempts to Acquire Cast Vote Records
Call your county clerk or auditor and they will almost certainly tell you the 2020 election was clean and that their office did everything by the book. Even the Secretary of State said in a letter to the Crow Wing County Commissioners that the system “worked as it was designed.”
But if the system that is working as it was designed is defrauding the people of Minnesota from free and fair elections, is that a system favorable to the continuation of our republic?
For months, Minnesotans have attempted to get data transparency from the 2020 election through public data requests for CVR but so far Zero usable CVRs have been provided for either the 2020 general election or the 2022 primary election.
The coverup on the 2022 primary election is arguably worse than the 2020 general election because the Aug 9, 2022 primary election was used to determine which candidates will be on the ballot for the 2022 midterm elections in November.
Given that there were 102 separate vote “drops” in the NY Times API coming from Edison Research, the people have numerous concerns from several angles.
Without cast vote records from any of Minnesota’s 87 counties for the 2020 General Election, none of the voters in those counties can say for sure whether the published results on the secretary of state’s website are accurate.
Why? Because the cast vote records (CVRs for Dummies version 2, PDF) are a log of the tabulator-recorded results.
In Minnesota, we may not have many cast vote records in part because there is a feature on the ES&S DS200 tabulator (in use in over 60 counties in 2020) which can be switched off—if ‘save ballot images’ is turned off (no digital image scanned), then the tabulators function like a previous (much cheaper) model, the Model 100, and do not save the cast vote records in a traditional way.
Of course, the optical scanners are still interpreting ovals on a bitmap which voters filled in. How else would the results be recorded, tallied, and reported?
County Level Efforts to Obtain Cast Vote Records
This is only Part 1 in an ongoing series to demonstrate a sample of the work Minnesotans have been doing for months to try to bring transparency to elections in their county. This work has been done without pay and without thanks and often in the face of ridicule, slander, and lies. Even so-called conservative local media organizations in Minnesota refuse to cover this courageous work.
But the work of Minnesotans across this state must be acknowledged not only for archival and historical purposes, but so that you the reader can react to this information in real time to seek the truth in your county.
In this article, which is Part 1 of the Cast Vote Record Cover Up in Minnesota, we’ll cover the following counties:
Todd County
Chisago County
Washington County
Todd County
In January 2022 a public data request was sent to Todd County for the cast vote records from the 2020 general election.
After back and forth across the next two months, the following PDF attachment was sent to the requester on March 24, 2022:
Chisago County
In the summer of 2022 the writer called the elections office in Chisago County and spoke with election official Bridgitte Konrad who said a Hart InterCivic employee did a software update earlier that year which prevented her sharing the cast vote record from 2020. This was perhaps already an admission of violating record retention laws such as 52 USC Ch 207 §20701.
When following up on the possibility of receiving the Aug 9, 2022 primary election CVR for Chisago County, Konrad indicated it was possible.
Chisago did comply with the public data request for the CVR shortly after the Aug 9, 2022 primary election, but provided a 1,726-page PDF that is not usable in a way to visualize and analyze as Cynthia Butler has shown in the opening graphics of this article.
It was requested to receive the data in a .csv or .json format so as to be able to visualize the data to check for ballot stuffing and digital manipulation. Here was the reply from the Chisago County Administrator, Chase Burnham:
Mr. van Mechelen,
Pursuant to Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13, the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (MNDPA), I am acknowledging receipt of your request for public data, which was received on August 17, 2022. In your request you are seeking ‘other file formats available for export? Perhaps .csv, .xlsx, or .json?.’
Pursuant to Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13, the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (MNDPA), the County is not required to create other formats of the requested data.
Thank you,
Chase Burnham | County Administrator
County Administration
313 N Main St
Room 170
Center City, MN 55012
Chase.Burnham@chisagocountymn.gov
Phone: 651-213-8877
‘Chisago County was created by the State of Minnesota to serve, protect, and enhance the quality of life for those we serve.’
To which the following reply was sent:
Mr. Burnham,
From the bottom of your email signature it reads:
‘Chisago County was created by the State of Minnesota to serve, protect, and enhance the quality of life for those we serve.’
Given that I'll be unable to interpret this CVR from Aug 9, 2022 in its current format, a 1,726 page PDF, how is the quality of life of those you serve being enhanced by fulfilling the minimum standards in a way which doesn't move the needle in terms of increasing election transparency?
I was already disappointed to learn that a Hart representative arrived in May 2022 to do a software update effectively archiving the election according to Bridgitte, which could be seen as a violation of 52 USC Ch 207 §20701 as well as Minnesota retention statutes.
Please reconsider whether this is all the help you'd like to give the public when transparency is a unifying issue for all voters in the county as well as all Minnesotans.
Thanks,
Erik van Mechelen
Washington County
In Washington County the winner of the 2022 primary election as well as several voters have properly requested cast vote records for the 2020 general and 2022 primary elections.
Because of the pattern of responses throughout the state, some Minnesotans are now asking for copies of the thumb drives used to transfer data from the tabulators over to the election management system machines.
A friend of mine went down to Washington Govt Center to hand deliver her request for 2020 CVR. The manager told her they don't have CVR in the county. She then requested the thumb drive and was told the thumb drive was wiped clean 10 days after the 2020 election because they need the machines for the next election in 2022. Nevertheless, they took her request and will send her a response in 10 days.
Thank you to everyone in Minnesota working so hard for transparent elections. Without extreme transparency there is no way to trust any of the results, including from the most recent August 9, 2022 primary election.
For more on [S]elections in Minnesota, read this book for free.
Follow Erik’s Exploration for details on election justice and research into why U.S. elections were subverted.
In Part 2 of this series additional county detail will be covered.
Want to take action to get the CVR for your county?
Find out what vendor is used in your county, then send these public data requests:
Dominion public data request for CVR
ES&S public data request for CVR
Hart public data request for CVR
You may not receive them, but you will start to build rapport with your election office and demonstrate that you will not stand aside when transparency is not forthcoming.
For even more information on CVR requests, go to MidwestSwampWatch.com