Alleged felon votes investigated

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WORTHINGTON — Nobles County Attorney Gordon Moore said Friday the Minnesota Majority spreadsheet with alleged felon voters contains the names of eight people who reportedly lived and voted in Nobles County at the time of the Nov. 4, 2008, election.

“In the course of researching irregularities in Minnesota’s 2008 General Election, Minnesota Majority obtained records from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension listing all persons under the supervision of the Minnesota Department of Corrections,” the conservative group’s report states. “From these records, we extracted a list of individuals charged with felony crimes at the time of the 2008 election. We then compared this list of felons to voter history records from the Secretary of State’s statewide voter registration system (SVRS).

“From this comparison, we compiled a list of 2,803 felons who potentially voted in the 2008 General Election.”

The group refers to itself as a state legislative watchdog group whose mission includes educating the public on the importance of traditional values and ideas, exposing the record of elected officials  and holding them accountable for their actions.

“Under Minnesota Statute 201.275, county attorneys are required to investigate allegations of voter fraud, so I have to look into (the allegations),” Moore stated. “It is a felony to vote when your civil rights have not been restored after a felony conviction.”

Preliminary investigation shows one of the eight people has died since the election and three more of the eight had probably had their civil rights restored before they voted.

“We are in the process of trying to verify that,” Moore said. “But at this time, it looks as if the list is inaccurate.”

The other four names are now the subject of a more focused investigation, he said, and will be looked into thoroughly.

The spreadsheet, which arrived via e-mail last week, contains more than 2,800 names of alleged felon voters in Minnesota, Moore explained. His job is to look into eight of those names.

“We started working on it pretty much right away. We are digging into court records and trying to make sense of what the allegations are,” Moore said.

Their first step was to check MNCIS, Minnesota’s online court document filing system. By using that system, Moore and law enforcement investigating the complaint could sometimes tell if the voter’s civil rights have been restored.

“It appears that is the case with three of them,” he reiterated. “That is one of the concerns about the list — that it is not complete, not accurate and in some cases may overstate dramatically the number of ineligible voters.”

For now, Moore said, he is taking the list for what it is — a complaint of voter fraud made under the state statute.

“I’m working with law enforcement and the courts to see what we can find out about these individuals and whether they are subject to criminal prosecution,” he explained. “I want people to know that we are looking into it, that we do have some folks who allegedly voted when they shouldn’t have, and that we will research this and see if that is the case.”

He has never had to investigate felon voter allegations before, Moore said, and the question is whether or not his office can prove if an alleged felon voter knowingly violated the law.

Tags: nobles county, news, election, felons, voting