Letter: Tehran vs. St. Paul

Most of us have likely seen the news images of protesters in Iran carrying signs saying things like, “Where’s my vote?” and “Why wasn’t my vote counted?”, etc.

Tehran is a long way — 5,000-plus miles — from St. Paul, but perhaps we should all be out in front of the Minnesota State Capitol holding signs like those of the Iranians.

On May 28, 2009, a group of Minnesota citizens and legislators sued Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and 25 county election officials for failure to comply with Minnesota election law.

One of the petitioners, Minnesota Majority, compared the official State

Canvassing Board with the Statewide Voter Registration System and found a discrepancy of 406,398 ballots, indicating more ballots were cast than votes were accounted for in the statewide voter registration system.

County auditors of these 25 counties have not complied with Minnesota Statute 201.171, which requires that they determine whether an individual listed is a registered voter or whether an individual should be registered as a voter.

The legal requirements are quite clearly delineated in the statutes, that under Statute 201.021 the Secretary of State is responsible for maintaining and administering the centralized permanent system of voter registration.

However, Minnesota’s statewide voter registration for the 2008 election reported only 2,513,816 voters. Yet the official Minnesota Canvassing Board Report reflected a total number of votes cast in 2008 as 2,920,214.

There you have it — 406,398 more ballots than voters! How could this happen in our nice, clean, lovely State of Minnesota?

Let’s all hope and pray the lawsuit of these patriotic citizens and legislators finds out.

Bob Tatreau

Woodbury

Tags: letters to the editor, opinion, tatreau, iran