419 Cedar Avenue South: Ground Zero in Minneapolis Voting Controversy
[Image courtesy of StarTribune]
A neighborhood mailbox center is smack-dab in the middle of a fierce legislative primary fight after the discovery that more than 100 voters had improperly used the address to register to vote. The Star Tribune has more:
All 141 voters registered at a mailbox center at 419 Cedar Av. in Minneapolis will have their registrations canceled after an investigation by the Hennepin County attorney’s office determined that the address was not a valid residence.
But county officials say individuals registered at the address can still vote in the highly competitive Phyllis Kahn vs. Mohamud Noor state House race if they re-register in the precinct in which they live.
None of the 141 individuals submitted an absentee ballot for the Kahn-Noor race, county officials said. Two new registrants tried to submit absentee ballots using the Cedar address for this election cycle and those ballots were rejected, but the individuals are still eligible to vote, investigators said.
The issue came to light as part of an intense political battle in advance of the August primary between Kahn, a longtime statehouse veteran, and Noor, who is part of the growing and politically active Somali-American community in the district:
The investigation came after Brian Rice, an attorney for Kahn’s campaign, filed a petition asking the county to investigate the 141 registrations at the Cedar Mailbox Center and alleged “massive voter fraud.”
But after Hennepin County officials conducted an investigation, they determined that while the registrations at issue needed to be cancelled, there was no evidence of deliberate attempts to evade the law:
Assistant County Attorney Dan Rogan said the investigation found no evidence of any organized or coordinated attempt to have individuals register using the mailbox address. Only 16 of the 141 registrations happened in 2014. Individuals have been registering using it since 2008.
“This has been happening for a while. It was really a result of people using this address and not knowing that they were supposed to put [down] their residential address,” Rogan said …
“Even for someone whose first language is English, there can be confusion around residence,” said elections manager Ginny Gelms. “We get a lot of questions from students or snowbirds.”
The fact that the Cedar Avenue address is not obviously a mail center (unlike other commercial business that offer boxes) was a contributing factor:
Of the 141 voters, 49 of them were incorrectly registered at the mailbox center because they submitted a change of address, the county found.
When a change of address occurs, the county receives that information from the secretary of state and the post office. The county then sends a notice to verify that the address is a residence. If the information is not corrected within 21 days, the county assumes the information was valid.
The county can sometimes catch mailbox addresses because they have a P.O. box designation. But the 419 Cedar address did not, and sometimes had an apartment number as well.
What remains to be seen is how many of those individuals registered at the Cedar Avenue address re-register; because Minnesota is an Election Day registration state, each of those 141 voters will be able to register right up until Election Day. But members of the community worry that the controversy and the resulting investigation will deter otherwise valid voters from turning out:
Omar Jamal, a Somali-American community activist, said Rice and Kahn owe the Somali-American community and Noor an apology, adding that the petition has instilled fear in the community. He said he and others now have to organize community outreach efforts to assure citizens that they can go out and vote.
This is a very big deal about a very detailed election administration issue – and is almost certainly likely to be an ongoing point of contention between Kahn and Noor and the voters who support them.
It could get very hot in Minneapolis before August 12 – stay tuned.