The Ramsey County attorney’s office has charged 30 people with election fraud in connection with the 2008 general election, a top official there said Monday.
The charges are the result of an ongoing investigation that included 746 referrals, mostly from an election reform-minded conservative group, Minnesota Majority. The investigation currently occupies four taxpayer-funded staffers within the county attorney’s office, with Phil Carruthers, director of the prosecutions division, saying he wants to add two or three part-time investigators.
“It’s a huge project,” Carruthers said.
The news surfaced after long-standing, and largely discredited, allegations that Minnesota’s 2008 U.S. Senate election was tainted by fraud were renewed Monday by a Fox News online report and amplified by the state Republican Party.
A Monday GOP news release claimed Ramsey County had kicked off a “massive voter fraud investigation” based on the Fox report, which claimed that more convicted felons may have voted in the 2008 election than the final margin in the U.S. Senate race between Sen. Al Franken and Norm Coleman. That story was based on a recent report by Minnesota Majority, which compared the state’s voter database to criminal records and resulted in hundreds of names being forwarded to local prosecutors for investigation.
But the FoxNews.com report inaccurately stated that the Ramsey County attorney’s office is seeking to hire 15 investigators to assist with its investigation. And it is not a new investigation but an effort that has been under way since shortly after the 2008 election and takes place after every election — a prosecutorial check into complaints of voter fraud.
Typically, Carruthers said, the office investigates anywhere from 100 to 200 cases following an election, with referrals coming from citizens, the local Ramsey County elections office or the secretary of state’s office. The difference in numbers this year is largely due to the list forwarded by Minnesota Majority.
In Hennepin County, Deputy County Attorney Pat Diamond said authorities are investigating 216 allegations flagged by Minnesota Majority but have yet to charge anyone from that list.
Carruthers said more than a third of their list was immediately dismissed, and another 135 have been investigated without resulting in charges. Seventeen cases are pending a review by attorneys.
“We take them very seriously. These are felonies. It takes careful investigation, and it’s time-consuming,” Carruthers said.
But he added that he hasn’t seen anything to indicate there was any organized effort to steal the election.
“I wouldn’t say that we’re getting any differing series of cases than what we’ve seen in the past,” Carruthers said.
Ramsey County Elections Manager Joe Mansky said there may be more cases than usual because so many people turned out for the 2008 election. He also said some people may have been more determined to vote for Democrat Barack Obama given the historic nature of the race and overlooked election rules.
Mansky said elections officials do comb through lists of voters to purge felons who are ineligible to vote but pointed out that it’s hard to make the system 100 percent foolproof. He also said that when there is a question of a voter’s eligibility, he will err on the side of allowing them to vote rather than dis-enfranchising them.
“Our system under the constitution is premised on the concept that you don’t have to prove that you’re not a criminal,” Mansky said. “That is the state’s obligation, to prove that you are.”
Minnesota Majority has been pushing for a rule requiring voters to present identification at polling places, which both the state GOP and Republican Dan Severson, DFL Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s main rival in the upcoming election, seized on following the FoxNews.com report.
But Mansky said it’s not clear how requiring ID would prevent fraud, given that ID cards can be fabricated and that felons are still allowed to drive.
“Convicted felons have IDs, too,” Mansky said. “We don’t learn anything from that.”
This report includes information from the Associated Press.
