Six weeks before the midterm elections, election officials in six Minnesota counties are alleged to have failed to remove 515 duplicate registrations from voter rolls in their jurisdictions, according to a complaint by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a watchdog organization dedicated to ensuring lawful and fair elections.
In September 2020, the continuing failure of many states to clean up inaccurate voter rolls led PILF to pronounce the American election system to be in a “critical condition.”
In a study of the voter rolls of 42 states, PILF analysts found that 37,889 duplicate registrants appear to have voted twice from the same address in the 2018 election.
The same report claims that 349,773 deceased people remained on the rolls of 41 states.
The foundation’s investigators also found that, in the 2018 election, 8,360 registrants appear to have voted in two states.
PILF filed the first formal complaint on Sept. 26 against an election official in Nicollet County, southern Minnesota.
Government records examined by PILF showed that two people have two different voter registration numbers, despite having the same year of birth and address.
“One of these apparent duplicate registrants ... voted twice in the 2020 election. ... Alarmingly, [the man] is a convicted criminal and has been committed as mentally ill and dangerous,” PILF said in a Sept. 26 statement.
According to PILF, the serial voter has a long record of criminal convictions.
J. Christian Adams, PILF’s president, said: “Duplicate registrations give people the opportunity to vote twice. It is alarming that a career criminal ... had the ability to vote twice.
“He only had that opportunity because Minnesota election officials were not removing duplicate registrations, as required by federal law.”
In a second complaint filed on Sept. 27, PILF analysts allege that 73 voters in Dakota County, southeastern Minnesota, appear to have two different voter registration numbers despite having the same year of birth and address.
PILF spokesperson Lauren Bowman Bis told The Epoch Times in an email: “Duplicate registrations are a serious problem because they allow people to vote twice. Fraudulent double votes can have an impact on the outcome of elections, especially local elections that often come down to a handful of votes.”
The federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires states to eliminate duplicate registrations.
Under its terms, states must create and maintain an accurate, computerized, statewide voter registration list.
PILF is currently locked in a legal battle with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, for her failure to remove nearly 26,000 deceased people from the state’s voter roll—a situation PILF says she was notified of before the 2020 election.
PILF has brought lawsuits and won in Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Delaware.
In the recent Delaware case, the Court of Chancery declared that the state’s vote-by-mail statute, enacted by the Democratic-controlled legislature in the pandemic year of 2020, violated the Delaware Constitution.
