More evidence that the Department of Justice’s dismissal of the voter intimidation case case against the New Black Panthers was purely political:

The e-mails show two political appointees’ involvement in Justice’s decision to dismiss, the watchdog group says. And, it notes, those e-mails contradict what Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for Justice’s Civil Rights Division, told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under oath: that decision involved “only career people.”

The e-mails lend additional credence to the long-held suspicion that politics drove Justice’s decision-making in this case. They also go a long way toward answering a key question: What is Attorney General Eric Holder hiding with his stonewalling against the commission’s investigation?

“These documents show that not only was the Black Panther decision shamelessly politicized by the Obama administration but also that Obama officials lied to cover up the scandal,” says Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president.

Remember – our system is juuuuuust fine.

Mitch Berg is arriving for his press conference.  He takes his place behind the podium.  The press bustle forward to get the best spots in front of the podium.

Berg waves his hands, and the press gradually quiet down.

BERG: OK, for starters; everyone knows Tom Emmer has won the election, and that his inauguration is inevitable.  And so, while the election did fall within the statutory limit requiring a recount of the vote, as required by Minnesota State Law, I urge the DFL and the Dayton campaign not to interfere with the obvious inevitability of Emmer’s victory by pursuing the process that is legally mandated and out of their control anyway.

Furthermore, when the inevitable happens at the end of this mandatory process that the DFL should not pursue anyway, I urge Mark Dayton and the DFL from restraining their lawyers from filing stupid lawsuits, regardless of whatever grounds they say they may have, for a Better Minnesota. 

We especially urge the Dayton campaign to refrain from filing lawsuits over so-called “irregularities” or “fraud” in the process.  Everybody knows we have the best electoral system in the world, so it’s a moot point.

And when all those lawsuits are dismissed, I implore the DFL not to sic throngs of SEIU goons on Republican recount watchers, offices and the homes of GOP activists in revenge for their inevitable loss. 

I will now take questions.

ERIK BLACK: Er, Mitch?  Why are you calling Emmer’s victory “inevitable”? 

BERG: Because it is, and has always been.  Next?

RACHEL STASSEN-BERGER: Er, has there been any indication whatsoever from the Dayton campaign that they plan on filing frivolous lawsuits simply to pointlessly extend the recount process and delay the transfer of power?

BERG: You just report what I say, OK?  Next question.

TOM SCHECK: Er, this bit about “not raising objections over irregularities” – that is their legal right as part of this process…

BERG: Right, but it will only detract from the inevitability of Emmer’s victory.   It’s stupid, and just between the two of us, it’s a sign that they hate children.  Next?

TIM PUGMIRE: This reference to SEIU goons – where does that come from?

BERG: Look, I’m not saying that they will sic goons or lawyers on anyone.  Not at all.  You have the context all wrong.  I’m just saying that when they inevitably lose the recount and Governor Emmer is inevitably inaugurated – as every sensible person who doesn’t secretly yearn for child porn can say will happen, once this pointless yet legally-mandated recount is over – it’d be very bad for a party to sic hordes of union goons on those they disagree with.

MARTY OWINGS: But Mitch – nobody’s talking about siccing goons on anyone.

BERG: I’m just asking questions.

PAT KESSLER: That wasn’t a question.  That was  a statement.  You told the DFL to refrain from siccing goons on people if they lose the recount.

BERG: Well, that’s just common sense.  You want a good state, and  you believe in democracy?  Ixnay on the goons!

Final question?

BILL SALISBURY:   So to sum it up, you’re asking the DFL and Dayton to refrain from doing things they never said they were going to do in the first place, and decline to do things that are obligations that are out of their hands according to Minnesota law. 

BERG: Yep.  That, and not kill people for revenge when Tom Emmer’s inevitable inauguration takes place.  Thanks!

Berg leaves the stage, as Brian Melendez silently takes notes in the back of the room.

Just keep chanting it.

Sheila Kihne at Activist Next Door is after Mark Ritchie now – and she’s not alone:

Our second close statewide election in two years has piqued the interest of renowed researcher and blogger, Trevor Louden, at the New Zeal blogspot. (New Zealand)

The blog post is titled “Mark Ritchie File 1 Conflict of Interest? Minnesota SOS Adjudicated Committee Colleagues’ Election results”

Loudon describes Ritchie’s connections to Wellstone Action (which are pretty well know around these parts) but he points out what should be very obvious: there is a major conflict of interest in serving on the Advisory Board for Wellstone action and being a “non-partisan” overseeing a statewide recount.

For those of you from out of state – “Wellstone Action“, named for the late Senator, is a political action organization dedicated to getting “progressive” organizing and training, to get “progressives” elected.

Ritchie is also backed by the “Secretary of State Project“, a Soros-backed PAC dedicated to getting “progressive” Secretaries of State elected – because Soros and the left’s power and money elite know that the best way to control this nation is to control its election system.

Sheila’s got plans:

This is getting interesting.

I have to hit the library tomorrow for more on Ritchie’s ties to far-left RONGEAD– a French NGO where Mark Ritchie is currently listed as a member of their Steering Committe (and Minnesota’s Secretary of State!!) Hey-Pat Doyle, did you know about RONGEAD in 2006 when you glossed over Ritchie’s coordination with a French NGO to produce United States federal government trade secrets? How about you Sharon Schmickle when you covered this story in the late 80’s when Ritchie was at the MN Dept of Agriculture? Unbelievable.

Pat Doyle, sugarcoating DFLers and cherrypicking stories against Republicans?  Who’da thunk it?

Last week – just before the election – the nation got a look at about twenty minutes of video depicting a group of citizens questioning officials from Crow Wing County – think Brainerd – about an apparent incident of ballot-stuffing.

The video left more questions than it answered.  Who were these people?  What did they see?

The media has touched on the story – and largely asked the really important questions, like “who did the people in the video vote for?”.  We’ll come back to that.

I figured it was time to talk with the actual people involved.

The weekend before election day, Monty Jensen of Brainerd took his girlfriend to the Crow Wing County courthouse to vote in person with an absentee ballot.  He had to take a partial day of vacation to do it; he commutes from Brainerd to the Twin Cities every day to work. His girlfriend commutes with him; she’s in pharmacy school at the U of M in Minneapolis.  “I’m on the road fifteen hours a day”, he points out.  So taking the time out to vote was a bit of an effort.

A little after 4:30 on Friday, October 29, Jensen and his girlfriend walked into the Crow Wing County Courthouse, and went upstairs to the Auditor’s office.  “It was full of people”, Jensen recalls.  They submitted their applications to the auditor, and took a seat to wait their turn to vote. .

“We waited for about fifteen minutes”, Jensen said, “and I noticed there were a lot of people there who seemed to have issues”; they were disabled.  “I didn’t think anything of that”, Jensen added.  

We’ll come back to that later in the story.

There appeared to be a dozen, maybe fifteen handicapped people, and perhaps three supervisors. 

“But what alarmed me”, said Jensen, “was, I’m looking across at a poll booth, and I see a staffer walk over with an individual who’s mentally handicapped, put down ballot w/pen.  The guy walked away from the booth.  She called him back over – you could tell by her body language she was getting impatient, and the guy wouldn’t come back.  So she filled out his ballot.  Then she retrieved hjim, and had him turn in his ballot.”

Jensen continued “So I went “what the hell?”  I couldn’t[ believe she filled out the guy’s ballot!”

“As I’m voting, the woman was 2 booths down with another invividual.  She was talking like he’s a child.  Telling him who he should vote for.  I think “This isn’t right”.   Going right down line, candidate by candidate. I look over – her hand was on the pencil.”  Jensen told me he overheard him instructing the man to vote a straight DFL ticket; “it was DFL candiates – Dayton, Oberstar, Taylor Stevens, Ward, right down the ballot, every candidate.”

Jensen said he asked the woman what she was doing. “She grabbed him, went across the room to other station, and continued filling out the ballot.  I’ve seen her dictate two people’s votes.  My perception is these people [the group of voters] don’t know where they’re at”.

Jensen became concerned.  “I went to counter and asked the county worker – “Is this legal?” 

Jensen stopped for a moment, and pointed out that he knows that it’s perfectly legal for people to help people to vote.  “I’m a disabled veteran.  I support the rights of the disabled”.

But, he added,  “this was more than “assistance”.

He went to a county worker, and asked if she was aware of what was going on.  “She says “Well, yeah””, Jensen continued.  “She seemed nervous. Eventually she said  “You don’t know the half of it.  This is the fourth group we’ve had today”. 

Jensen pointed out that his girlfriend witnessed this statement.  I’ll be talking with her shortly.

Jensen was so upset by this point that he left the courthouse.  “I didn’t really know what to do”. 

That would come later.

More later this week.

I got this email.  The author asked to remain anonymous:

Mitch, in 2008 my mentally incompetent mother at an assisted living facility in St. Paul probably voted. We never had her declared incompetent, but the staff knew she was completely out of it. They also knew she was so afraid of being kicked out of a place she liked she would do whatever the staff person told her to do. She literally didn’t know what day of the week it was let alone who was running for office. I was the responsible party. I never changed her voter registration when she moved. Somehow she registered to vote at her new address. I found absentee ballot application information in her apartment as well as an I Voted sticker on her walker. I was livid, but it was after the election so there was nothing I could do. Before senile dementia had set in she adored Norm Coleman but you can bet her vote went to Franken.

I suspect a lot of this goes on. After all, SEIU represents a lot of nursing home staff.

I have a hunch this state could keep an army of investigators busy.

It might be a good Obama “shovel-ready” project.

A Democrat-linked student group is accused of wholesale vouching of voters:

Members of Students Organizing for America, a group of students aligned with the Democratic Party, may face a criminal investigation and possible felony charges after confrontations with an election judge over voter vouching during Tuesday’s election.

Ginny Gelms, the interim elections director in Minneapolis, said she will submit a report to the Hennepin County attorney’s office and the Minnesota Secretary of State‘s office today. The offices will investigate a possible incident of improper vouching.

Gelms said she was told by the University Lutheran Church precinct’s chair election judge there were two incidents of individuals trying to vouch for people they did not personally know.

Read the whole thing.

And keep telling yourself “Minnesota has the best, fairest, most transparent electoral system in the country!”

Remember this video, from just before the election?

Here’s part I of the video…:

…along with Part II…:

…and Part III.

In the video, Monty Jensen of Brainerd describes what he believes to be an act of egregious vote fraud at the Crow Wing County Court House.

I had a long conversation with Jensen last night. I’ll be blogging about that, as well as some of the other principals in this story, starting tomorrow in Shot In The Dark.

I”m on the phones here at the Election Integrity Watch center.

 I just got a call from a woman complaining about the posters by polling stations in North Minneapolis, “targeting people of color”.  I pointed out that we’re getting most of our calls from places like Plymouth, Blaine and Golden Valley. 

“Well, you have people in North Minneapolis harrassing people of color!”  I pointed out that all of “our people” are here in the boiler room with me, as I speak (except for two who are out in da hood in Minnetonka investigating a ballot storage issue).  

She quickly changed chanting points; “how do you sleep at night, knowing you’re doing hate speech?”  I said it was our First Amendment right, and our efforts are utterly non-partisain. 

She sounded like she was getting frustrated.  “Congratulations on doing what the Klan can’t anymore!”, she huffed, hanging up.

Jeff Davis notes that that’s a genuine worry, here; the DFL sending sock puppets out pretending to be from Minnesota Majority.

I’m at the Election Integrity Watch headquarters in Roseville. 

Events so far: 

• Plenty of calls about broken scanners: There seems to be an epidemic of election judges claiming the machines are broken, and honest, they’ll store the ballots under the machines ’til later; five counties so far.  This is ludicrous; these machines were supposed to have been tested last night!  If you run into this, make sure that your precinct has a partisan poll-watcher (a GOP as well as a DFL one) to watch the ballots.  There needs to be one from each party!  If you run into a “broken machine” and there are not poll watchers from your party present to safeguard the chain of custody for your ballot, you need to call the Election Integrity Watch hotline: 877-602-9282.
• Apparel: While the regional leftybloggers have  been caterwauling about a federal judge denying a restraining order against denying people with Election Watch buttons and t-shirts from entering the polls, a federal judge in Arizona has apparently granted a nearly identical restraining order.   We have a few reports of people being told to remove or cover up Tea Party or Republican t-shirts; rumor has it there are a few “comparitive tests” going on with people walking in with SEIU/ACORN/Obamaware on, right before people with Tea Party duds.  We’ll see what happens.   One respondent says he walked into a polling station in Maplewood.  No rules were posted.  Two election judges said nothing; a third walked up to him as he was voting and asked him to cover up; “all it takes is one take and we get in trouble”. 
• Sock Puppet: An “Attorney” named Dann Dobson, portraying himself as a Republican activist, talked his way into the Minnesota Majority office.  Now, if you follow Saint Paul ultra-left politics, you know Dann Dobson is no Republican.  The word got around; Dobson was turned away after his rather curious little attempt to infiltrate the call center.
• Pre-marked ballot: We have a report from a voter in the north suburbs saying he got a ballot with Lori Swanson and Tarryl Clark pre-marked for him.  The voter is coming in to swear out an affadavit.  More as the situation warrants.  UPDATE:  This is being forwarded to the Anoka County Sheriff and the Anoka County Attorney.  UPDATE 2: The election judge is claiming that the pre-marked ballot was really a spoiled ballot that was “inadvertently” put back into the pile.  The attorney in the room says “look for a bunch more “spoiled ballots””.  UPDATE 3: It’s 1PM, and the complainant is here, filling out his affadavit.
• Intimidation?: A group of students at Saint Olaf is standing directly outside the polling station pressing people for their voting choices, basically acting like and/or pretending to be exit pollsters.  We’re speculating it’s just a bunch of students on a project, rather than engaged in any foul play – but action is being taken to get them moved.
• Coercion: We are getting multiple reports of buses full of senior citizens being driven to the polls, and being urged or coerced to vote DFL.  More as details emerge.  UPDATE:  It’s one report from Golden Valley, so far.  IT was a bus full of voters from a nursing home.  The investigation is underway. 
• Insecure Storage: We have two allegations, now, of ballots being stored insecurely; the official “overflow” storage is part of the optical scanner, and it holds about thirty ballots.  As the number of ballots backing up due to the broken-down scanners (see above) increases, ballots are being stored in any old kind of cardboard box that is available.   “This is very serious”, says Jeff Davis of the Minnesota Majority.

I”ll be updating this while I”m in the call center.  If you see any election irregularities – any of them – call 877-602-9282.

And it’s time for the first allegation of election fraud.

On Friday, October 30, 2010, a member of the Minnesota Freedom Council witnessed apparent voter fraud occurring at the Crow Wing County Courthouse in Brainerd, Minnesota. Upwards of 100 residents from a local group home for mentally disadvantaged individuals were brought into the County Courthouse to cast absentee ballots. The witness reported that supervisors were telling voters to cast a straight Democratic ticket. There was even a report of a voter prematurely leaving the voting both and a supervisor casting the ballot for the voter. Essentially, the people in-charge were taking advantage of the mentally disabled in order to bolster the vote for their candidates of choice. These individuals involved can be charged with a felony under Minnesota election laws.

Here’s part I of the video…:

…along with Part II…:

…and Part III.

Only legal voters should have the right to vote.

This deserves an investigation.

If a democracy can’t trust its democratic institutions, is it a democracy at all?

Watch – some nutslap leftyblogger will call that “voter intimidation”.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Voter fraud is a touchy issue in Minnesota.  The powers that be constantly tell us we have the most incorruptible election system in the country – but not one in 10,000 Minnesotans could explain to you correctly how the 2008 Senate election went from a 200-vote win for Norm Coleman to a 300 vote win for Al Franken.  The Minnesota Majority has found hundreds of ambiguous registrations that led to scads of investigations that have led to dozens of convictions for voter fraud so far, in two of our 87 counties.  And our Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, is a former “community activist” whose 2006 campaign to get elected was bankrolled in part by George Soros’ effort to take SecState offices nationwide.

So yeah, this is serious business.

And let me make sure we give credit where it’s due; the video came from “Election Integrity Watch“.  We need to run down some facts, here – but it deserves investigation.