Establishing trust in our elections by Rick Weible & Susan Shogren-Smith

Last night in Wright County Susan Shogren Smith and Rick Weible gave a presentation on establishing trust in our election system. The 56 slides can be accessed on the home page of Midwest Swamp Watch and are well worth reviewing, even if, like me, you were not in attendance.

Susan spoke about Minnesota Statute changes coming out of the 93rd Minnesota Legislature and the impact on elections as well as implications for major political parties, and in particular the caucus process starting in February 2024. Much more context on that at Rebuild the MNGOP. Susan gave input on how concerned citizens can approach election law changes, caucus, and interactions with legislators.

Rick spoke about his hand count studies after successfully ordering 10,000 ballots from SeaChange, which provides ballot stock for elections, which were then used to print copies of Wisconsin’s Dodge County ballots for hand count studies which showed problems with absentee ballot folds and other areas of tabulator tallying being incorrect when compared with human eyes and ears judging voter intent. While a Minnesota statute amendment to Chapter 13 (Data Practices) have attempted to decrease transparency by hiding the ballot images from the public, it was suggested a that election judges could perform a brief hand count while waiting for ticker tapes to print out (this assumes all laws and procedures remain the same from now until November 2024).

However, based on current bipartisan legislation already in effect which makes Donald John Trump the Commander in Chief and a wartime president in an ongoing war against worldwide trafficking (with assistance of partner forces in many countries) and based on the fact that Donald John Trump has said, one year ago on Nov 15, 2022, that basically, We are not going to allow elections like the past to happen again, that future elections will be different. “It’s horrible what’s happening with our election and election process and I’ll get that job done. That’s a very personal job for me. I take that very personally. But this is just the beginning of our national greatness agenda.” (EO13848 signed on Sept 12, 2018 proves both Trump and military were very aware of domestic interference in 2016 and prior.) To me that means counting only legal ballots from legal voters. HOW that happens, we will see.

I think Susan and Rick’s work is exemplary but you should read and consider it for yourself, and I plan to highlight more of it as the days go along because they’d laid so much groundwork for Minnesotans, just like the founders did for America and all Americans if only we take the time to read and understand. Once Minnesotans learn the language, terminology, and definitions of Minnesota Statutes as it relates to elections, they will be better able to converse with legislators and also impress changes to the system locally, whether at township, municipal, county, or state levels. Susan and Rick are able to make informed recommendations because they have equipped themselves as demonstrated in this presentation (scroll to Nov 14th 2023 - MN Wright County Presentation - Download PDF or click ‘next’ to view slides one by one).