Is the Minnesota GOP responsible for Absentee Ballot confusion?

I was sitting around checking out the copies of the absentee ballots Coleman wants to count at the Startribune site.

It was interesting going through all the individual categories that these absentee ballots were piled into.

Right wing bloggers have used Secretary of State Mark Ritchie as their proverbial punching bag and have called for election reforms.

Dori and I get a lot of political mail, 99% from DFL candidates and the state party. Beyond the government paid Bachmann lit pieces we also got an interesting piece from the Minnesota State Republican Party.

It was a standard fear mongering mailing, raising fears over Barack Obama, Al Franken, and Elwyn Tinklenberg, and provided us with absentee ballot information.

It raised some serious suspicions on our part...

A. Why would the Minnesota Republican Party send absentee ballot information to people who identify as strong or moderate DFL?

B. We live in Cokato, in Wright County. The Minnesota Republican Party self addressed postcard would send our ballot request to Litchfield, in Meeker County.

While the chances Dori and I would be confused over something like this are extremely minimal, I often wondered about the elderly and those that are confused by the absentee voting process.

I recognized it as a deliberate attempt to confuse and disenfranchise voters, and I still see it that way.

While Ron Carey, Cullen Sheehan, and the right wing blogosphere take pot shots at the Secretary of State and county election officials, perhaps they should take a look in the mirror and acknowledge that their own party screwed Norm Coleman over.

How many Minnesota voters were confused and left disenfranchised by the Republican party's mailings?

Once we get back from our 4-5 day stay down here in the cities, we'll try to dig up the mailing in question and get it posted...

More on Meeker County Republican's "hanging chads"

MDE has a post up about a Minnesota Republican Party email claiming "the DFL did not hold a true caucus."

"Our participation represents people who actually caucused and want to be more intimately involved; the DFL conducted a quasi-primary under the broad umbrella of the word 'caucus'. Their 'quantity' is no match for our 'quality' of participation."

Lovely...excpet if you were a Meeker County Minnesota Republican!

Recall my post on the mess created by Meeker County Republican leadership.

I questioned what was going on in Meeker County. When I checked the Secretary of State site this morning, the only precinct that reported numbers was Cedar Mills, where Ron Paul beat Mike Huckabee 83-67. Romney finished with 55 votes, McCain 43, and Alan Keyes 7.

It remains the only precinct in Meeker County to have results posted at the SOS site. Interesting. Ron Paul won Meeker County and the "Republican Leadership" in Meeker County decided to not send in the proper election results? They reported zero's to their party and to the Secretary of State!

It's been said that "the revolution will not be televised". The "Ron Paul Revolution" swept through Meeker County Tuesday night yet the votes weren't even reported properly. It's been reported through the Litchfield Independent Review and other sources that Ron Paul won Litchfield as well, soundly defeating Huckabee, Romney, Keyes, and McCain. Yet, the SOS has no results up?

Isn't this the same party that's looking to change the way Minnesotan's vote? We know these cats are drinking the same kool-aid Tom Emmer and Dean Urdahl are drinking. Yet, they voted and the votes were not recorded?

I'd say integrity of the process was lacking in Meeker County. While the Minnesota Republican Party labels the DFL process as a "quasi-primary" the Meeker County GOP particpated in an attempted coup.

Democracy 101: Meeker County Republican Style

(Warning...naughty language depicted in an image)

So...recall my post about the SD 18 Caucus results?

I questioned what was going on in Meeker County. When I checked the Secretary of State site this morning, the only precinct that reported numbers was Cedar Mills, where Ron Paul beat Mike Huckabee 83-67. Romney finished with 55 votes, McCain 43, and Alan Keyes 7.

It remains the only precinct in Meeker County to have results posted at the SOS site.

Interesting. Ron Paul won Meeker County and the "Republican Leadership" in Meeker County decided to not send in the proper election results? They reported zero's to their party and to the Secretary of State!

It's been said that "the revolution will not be televised". The "Ron Paul Revolution" swept through Meeker County Tuesday night yet the votes weren't even reported properly.

It's been reported through the Litchfield Independent Review and other sources that Ron Paul won Litchfield as well, soundly defeating Huckabee, Romney, Keyes, and McCain. Yet, the SOS has no results up?

Isn't this the same party that's looking to change the way Minnesotan's vote? We know these cats are drinking the same kool-aid Tom Emmer and Dean Urdahl are drinking. Yet, they voted and the votes were not recorded?

I can imagine the horror all throughout Meeker County Tuesday night. I thought I heard the faint sound (while safely tucked away in my Wright County Outpost) of clanking pitchforks seeking out these "evil dooers", the infidels in charge of the Ron Paul Revolution.

So, I wonder how the conversation went, in order to come to such a monumental decision?

Surprised Meeker GOP leader: "Great Oden's Raven! Ron Paul has won Meeker County! This is crazy! What do we do?"

Surprised Meeker GOP leader II: "Let's burn em!"

Leader: "We can't ride across Meeker County burning Ron Paul supporters, Dean Urdahl's gonna need all the help he can get in November."

Leader II: "No, let's burn the ballots! Where's Mary Kiffmeyer when we need her?"

The angry mob must have worked its way across the County seeking out those responsible for the Meeker County "Ron Paul Revolution". The "Revolution" signage is still intact in Wright County...hopefully the winds will keep everything east of here...

In all seriousness now, I have had numerous conversations with Republican Leaders in Meeker County. They objected to my staunch anti war / Iraq position, even though most of them never served a day in our nation's military.

They spoke of American "bringing Democracy to the Middle East". Remember this photo?

You cannot deploy democracy.

I find it sad that the Meeker County Republican's tout the successes of the purple fingered Iraqi voters and yet on the same breath, gave another finger to those that showed up to vote and caucus this past Tuesday. They're all worried about those "illegals" voting but then lack the integrity and moral courage to accurately report their own results.

So, Ron Paul is so threatening to these individuals that they neglected to properly report 29 precincts in Meeker County? Now that's democracy!!!

"Thank you for coming to caucus tonight".

SOS Precinct Caucus Finder

To paraphrase Mercury Rising, "The Secretary of State Precinct Caucus Finder: So easy, even Michael Brodkorb can do it." (one click away from the SOS homepage)

Other bloggers have covered the unveiling of the new site as well, Across the Great Divide and Bluestem Prairie.

Brodkorb is caught once again embellishing a situation. While he takes great pride in taking shots at Mark Ritchie and others, it's always nice to see that Brodkorb is simply a tool. A tool that was yet again proven wrong.

What makes this even more hacktackular is that this week, Ritchie’s office came out with a new-and-improved caucus-finding tool, one so easy even a Brodkorb can do it, to paraphrase the GEICO ad. As Ollie notes over at BSP, it got rave reviews, too, even from Republican activist Sara Janacek.

This tool was obviously in the works for months, well before Carey’s Mouth o’ Sauron opened his trap about it last week. And Brodkorb, who is the GOP’s chair in State District 25 and thus would presumably be in the loop when it came to knowing basic elections information, should have known about it well beforehand, as Ollie points out (emphases mine):

So, um, yeah...about that map Mikey...