A Minnesota Senate panel on Wednesday advanced a measure that would create a voter identification requirement in the state, less than a decade after Minnesota voters rejected a similar proposal at the ballot in 2012.
State Sen. Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson, proposed a new state law that would require voters present identification before registering to vote, and also at the polls.
Voters without an acceptable form of identification would be given a provisional ballot. Continue reading.
SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Today, Minnesota DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin condemned Minnesota’s Republican congressional delegation for fueling the baseless conspiracy theories around the 2020 election that are at the heart of the numerous violent protesters taking place on the steps of the United States Capitol.
“For months, Congressmen Stauber, Emmer, Hagedorn, and Fischbach have been fueling the fires of conspiracy and paranoia that now threaten to engulf our nation’s Capitol,” said DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin. “Each of Minnesota Republican members of Congress has worked to sow distrust in the American electoral process and each of Minnesota’s Republican members of Congress bears responsibility for the violence their actions have helped unleash.”
One month after the presidential election results came in, none of Minnesota’s Republican members of Congress were willing to declare President-elect Biden the rightful winner of that election, a sentiment shared by Congresswoman-elect Fischbach.
In December, Congressmen Stauber, Emmer, and Hagedorn signed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the 2020 elections. Stauber claimed, without offering any evidence, that he did so because there were “questions on the integrity of this presidential election” that needed to be addressed. Today, Congresswoman Michelle Fischbach said she would object to certifying the results of the presidential election.
Following numerous clashes with law enforcement, Republican-aligned protesters have breached the United States Capitol and are engaged in an armed standoff with law enforcement at the door to the House chamber. Members of Congress and staff have been asked to evacuate their offices and one member even received a bomb threat.
“The sustained attack on the integrity of our democracy by Representatives Fischbach, Stauber, Emmer, and Hagedorn has done serious harm to our ability to function as a nation and resolve our differences peacefully via the ballot box,” added Martin. “Today is one of the darkest days I have witnessed. Donald Trump poured the gasoline and Republican leaders lit the match that ignited this dark time in our history. I pray our nation can recover from the wounds inflicted on us by cowardly politicians who would sooner incite violence and sedition than stand up for American democracy and the rule of law.”
Election officials on Friday swiftly rejected claims by Minnesota Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan that “extreme data abnormalities” might have influenced the state’s Nov. 3 election after her examples proved to be nothing more than instances of high voter turnout.
“The bottom line is you can’t just throw out conjecture and guesswork without real evidence,” said Risikat Adesaogun, spokeswoman for the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office. It was “hard to respond to allegations that are so vague and unformed.”
Nonpartisan election officials in Anoka and Wright counties, two main counties cited by Carnahan, said they found nothing that would call into question the integrity or validity of the vote. A Star Tribune analysis of Minnesota election data since 2000, for both presidential and gubernatorial elections, found nothing irregular about this year’s voting trends. Continue reading.
SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA — Today, Minnesota DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin issued the following statement on the Minnesota Republican Party’s absurd claims of voter fraud:
“The Minnesota Republican Party has gone all in on Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert a free and fair American election based on no evidence whatsoever. Baseless and reprehensible attacks on the legitimacy of our elections are corrosive to the most basic ties that bind our country together.
“When election results we do not like become election results we do not accept, American democracy will cease to function. Minnesotans of all political affiliations must repudiate this attack on democracy if we are to remain a country with the incredible freedom to elect our own leaders.”
SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Ken Martin, Chairman of the Minnesota DFL Party, released the following statement in response to the video put out by Project Veritas:
“Project Veritas is a discredited, far-right propaganda outfit known for lying, entrapment, and breaking the law. At a time when President Trump is trying to use fake claims of voter fraud to subvert a free and fair election, anyone that uses completely unverified information from a right-wing propaganda group to bolster the President’s bogus claims is doing real harm to our democracy. While the Republican Party tries to subvert our democracy, the DFL Party is working hard to ensure that every eligible voter can fully and freely participate in our elections. If Representative Drazkowski or any organization has evidence of illegal activities occurring around our elections, they should immediately present that evidence to the proper authorities so they can begin a thorough investigation.”
Project Veritas and their founder, James O’Keefe, have a long history of lying, entrapment, breaking the law, and manipulating evidence in order to produce undercover videos that fit a particular narrative.
Below are numerous examples that illustrate Project Veritas’ penchant for producing fake news.
Continue reading “DFL Party Statement on Project Veritas Video”Minnesota Republicans are on record with being concerned about people voting by mail. Now, the Minnesota GOP is sending out ballot applications. It seems to us that there is no consistency with this kind of behavior unless they only want specific people to vote safely. If it’s fraudulent for people to vote by mail, wouldn’t be fraudulent for Republicans to do so?
The Republican National Committee this week bragged about Donald Trump’s victory in Minnesota’s GOP primary Tuesday night — ignoring the fact that Trump was the only candidate on the ballot.
“Fueled by momentum for @realDonaldTrump’s agenda, our party saw historic turnout last night in several key battleground states,” the party tweeted Wednesday.
It noted specifically that Trump had received “150% more votes than he did in 2016” in North Carolina and “at least 4x the numbers of votes as he did in the 2016 caucus” in Minnesota. Continue reading.
NOTE: The 2018 voters may have supported Democratic candidates, but we can’t assume that will be the case next year. And, we can’t allow ourselves to not stay engaged and make certain our family and friends are aware of what the Republicans and President Trump truly stand for.
After the narrow loss in 2016, Republicans are pulling out all the stops.Days after President Donald Trump officially announced his 2020 re-election bid, Minnesota Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan attended a picnic on the White House lawn. As they posed for a selfie, the state GOP leader thanked the president for making three visits to the state since taking office.
“I told him, ‘We appreciate you coming and we hope to see you here at least as many times before the election next year,’ ” Carnahan said.
The president’s response: “I will be there.”
View the complete July 14 article by Torey Van Not on The Star Tribune website here.
EXCELSIOR, MN – Congressman Erik Paulsen’s coordinated negative television campaign has earned him unprecedented scrutiny from local fact checkers, but another tactic has earned him less scrutiny, with dozens of special interest-funded mailers containing the same objectively false claims landing in mailboxes across the Third District.
“Voters in Minnesota’s Third District have been subjected to a barrage of objectively false claims on TV and in their mailboxes thanks to Erik Paulsen and his special interest funders,” said Zach Rodvold, campaign manager for Phillips for Congress. “The pieces are too numerous to track, and have no regard for fact or truth — oftentimes coming from dark money groups who operate with no transparency. Congressman Paulsen and his special interest patrons have shown an unrelenting commitment to buying this election, and embracing Donald Trump’s propensity for lies and personal slander on the campaign trail as much as they have his policies in Washington.”
Congressman Paulsen has raised over $2.7 million from PACs – the fourth most of anyone in Congress – and used the money to run an unprecedentedly negative campaign that has been called inappropriate, reckless, false, distorted, not even in the same time zone as truth, extremely misleading, just plain false, and wildly out of context by independent journalists, community leaders, sexual harassment survivors, and Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike. While the TV ads have been the subject of scrutiny by independent fact checkers, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of deceptive direct mail has gone unnoticed.
Continue reading “Paulsen’s Lies Not Limited to TV: Debunked Claims Hit Mailboxes Too”
[ST. PAUL, MN] – Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Chairman Ken Martin is calling out Minnesota Republicans’ silence and refusal to forcefully condemn the Trump-Pence Administration for its disturbing reaction to last weekend’s violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and asking whether they will campaign with the ticket in the weeks and months ahead. Continue reading “After President Trump’s Refusal to Denounce White Supremacists, Will Minnesota Republicans Campaign with the President and Vice President, Continue their Silence?”
