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.

As you read this, I’m heading over to my polling station to get in line to vote.  I may not be the first in the door, but I’ll be close.

My slate?

• Governor/Lt. Governor: No surprise here.  Emmer/Meeks. I believe I’ve made my reasoning amply clear both recently and over the past six months.
• Congress: Teresa Collett.  For all sorts of positive reasons – she is brilliant and has the best vision – and, regrettably, negative ones as well, given Betty McCollum’s crushing vapidity.
• Secretary of State: Dan Severson. Our election system is a disgrace. We need to put the grownups in charge, and eject the Soros-sponsored ACORN effluvium Richie.
• Attorney General: Chris Barden.  It’ll be so much easier to untangle the corruption of the Hatch years if his successor can’t claim executive privilege.
• State Auditor: Pat Anderson.  She’s qualified, she has experience, she has integrity.  Otto has experience, sort of.  No brainer.
• SD66: Greg Copland.
• HD66B: Bob Koss.
• Ramsey County Commission, District 4: Rory Koch.
• Appellate Court: Dan Griffith
• Minnesota Supreme Court: Greg Wersal and Tim Tingelstad.  It’s time to start tossing incumbents.
• Ramsey County Sheriff:  Matt Bostrom will be the first endorsed DFLer I will have voted for since 1998.  He may well be the last.  Let’s make it count.
• Ramsey County Attorney: Dave Schultz.  Not because of anything he’s done, necessarily, although he is fully qualified to do the job. I am voting against the DFL machine; John Choi is just another cog in that machine.  I can not in good conscience support him.
• An unopposed RamCo judge position: For three of them, I will be filling in family pets.  I do this to ensure my vote is counted.  One of those pets will be Nosemarie, my cat.  But whenever I write this, Nose usually gets between 3 and 7 other write-in votes.   Which is fun, and let me assure you, Noser appreciates it.  But it defeats my purposes to an extent; I can’t tell which one is my ballot.  So two of my other pets, who shall remain anonymous, shall also receive votes for unopposed judicial seats (for judges with terrible records on father’s rights, usually).  When I check back after the election for vote totals, and see them on the register, I know Mark Ritchie failed to disenfranchise me for yet another cycle.

As I do before every important election, I’m listing the top 100 reasons I’m voting for the top of the ticket.

Of course, I became an Emmer supporter long ago.  The GOP started the campaign early – right around State Fair time in 2009 – with a crop of great candidates and rumored candidates.  Paul Kohls was a sharp guy; I could have easily supported Pat Anderson; Dave Hann is right about everything that matters; most of all, Marty Seifert would have been an excellent standard-bearer.  I would happily have written these 100 reasons about any of them.

But Emmer became my personal front-runner as Ed and I interviewed him at the Fair on September 4, 2009.  Someone asked him a question about some kind of wedge-y social issue or another.  And without skipping a beat, Tom responded “I dont’ care; this election is about jobs and the economy”.  Emmer is the single best stump speaker in Minnesota politics today.  And for all the left and media’s efforts to paint him as some sort of extremist, Tom has not only stuck to that message, but has shown himself superb at explaining that message to people who don’t start out as believers.  Which is the main reason the DFL has had to run such a superlatively slimy, negative campaign against him.

And to be honest, those were the only reasons I really need to support Tom Emmer.  But I came up with 99 more.  Because that’s what I do.

To wit – the 100 main reasons I’m voting for Tom Emmer today.

1. Because the DFL’s plan is a return to the past, in ways that just don’t make sense anymore.
2. Because the DFL’s big-money, big-union, big-service model was based on economy that exploded at a time when America was the only serious economy on earth.
3. And times have changed.
4. And Tom Emmer knows that we have to change our government with those times.
5. And Mark Dayton thinks that if you throw enough obstinacy and rhetoric and taxpayers money at life, the clock will turn itself back to the DFL’s glory days.
6. Not to mention his own glory days.
7. And as that great political commentator said, Glory Days will pass you by in the wink of a young girl’s eye.
8. Because Emmer’s about providing three things; Jobs
9. Jobs, and
10. Jobs.
11. And Dayton is not.
12. Unless you’re an AFSCME, SEIU, MAPE other state employee.
13. Indeed, we know of many companies that are going to leave Minnesota, sooner or later, if taxes don’t moderate.
14. And we know many, many more that are waiting on the fence to see where their investments are going to go.
15. Because it’s not just about creating jobs.  It’s about creating a climate where companies will create jobs, and new companies will form, and hire people to work for them, and more new companies will form to provide goods and services and wholesaling and distribution and support and markets and suppliers for the companies above.
16. And Mark Dayton’s policies will curb that as effectively as any policy designed to curb business growth on purpose ever could.
17. Because our state government needs to be re-engineered…
18. …and Emmer has the plan to do it…
19. …while Mark Dayton’s entire plan is to just pour more of our money down the rathole.
20. Because of Emmer’s enemies; the SEIU, AFSCME, the Teamsters, and the bureaucracy are the only people who benefit from the current government.
21. Because Tom Emmer is one of us.
22. And I just know that some idiot leftyblogger will go “yeah, he’s a middle class white guy”, which shows you yet another reason Emmer needs to win; the phony “diversity” pimps must not be rewarded.
23. No, Tom Emmer is a Minnesota guy who grew up the child of business people, worked for the business, worked his way through college and law school, worked his way up the hierarchy of his business – just the way most Minnesotans have to, whether they’re white middle class guys…
24. …or Latino working-class gals…
25. …or black single mothers who are fighting to keep their kids’ charter schools afloat…
26. …or Asian immigrants who are working in their uncle’s restaurant while they earn their engineering degree.  It’s all part of a story…
27. …that Mark Dayton never participated in, can not understand…
28. …and has to have interpreted for him  by his advisers from the AFSCME, MFT, MAPE, SEIU, ACORN, CommonCause and MoveOn.
29. Tom Emmer doesn’t have to have anyone explain “the Minnesota Dream” to him.  He’s lived it, and his whole plan is about opening up that dream to everyone.
30. Because Mark Dayton is the wrong guy for the job.
31. He was an unmitigated disaster as a Senator…
32. …and an undistinguished State Auditor….
33. …and a failure as Economic Development commissioner – so bad that his boss’ son wrote an Op-Ed claiming that he bailed on the job before a recession, to salvage his political future.
34. And his only “plan” is to start jacking up taxes.
35. And as much as he caterwauls about “taxing the rich”, the fact is that his proposed “taxes on the rich” won’t even begin to cover the deficit, will slow the state’s economy and sent it into a vicious, revenue-killing spiral…
36. …that will result in the definition of “the rich” being pushed ever downward until pretty much everyone in Minnesota is “rich”…
37. …while, paradoxically, poor.
38. Because his plan will gut charter schools – a racist plan that will destroy the only meaninful “school choice” most inner-city parents of color, and from poor families, and immigrants and Native Americans, have to try to get their children a decent education.
39. (But Dayton needn’t care, because he went to Yale).
40. Dayton’s plan, indeed, is voodoo economics of the most trite, vapid order.
41. And Minnesotans are smarter than that.
42. (Or, after Ventura, McCollum, Ellison and Franken, I guess I should say they can be smarter than that.  Here’s your chance, Minnesota!)
43. Because “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” is, paradoxically, an alliance for a much, much worse Minnesota.
44. Because while I don’t really want big corporations buying my elections, I don’t want Alita Messenger buying them, either.
45. Or Big Unions.  What’s the SEIU done for us lately, besides demand more money and more subsidies?
46. Ditto the Minnesota Federation of Teachers?
47. Or, more tellingly, the entire Dayton family?
48. Because anyone the Twin Cities Media has been working so hard to gundeck this last six months has to be good.
49. Because Pat Doyle smeared Emmer in the Strib…
50. …and I busted Doyle.
51. Because if Tom Emmer wins, maybe the Twin Cities media will examine some of their prejudices, and focus less on electing DFLers and more on…reporting the news?
52. Because if Emmer wins, perhaps people will, once and for all, start treating the Minnesota Poll like “news”, and more like an “in-kind campaign contribution”, which is all it is.
53. Ditto the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute Poll
54. And “Mid-Morning with Keri Miller”.
55. Because while I have no doubt that the Twin Cities media will eventually ask questions about Mark Dayton’s alcoholic relapses and mental health record, it’d be good to settle that before he takes on the most powerful job in Minnesota.
56. Or preferably rather than taking it on.
57. Because it will pound a stake through the heart of the old, RINO Republican party
58. Because Lori Sturdevant seems to have staked out a market at tut-tutting Republicans for not being like the Republicans of the 1970’s – and far be it from me to want to constrict somebody’s market.
59. Because Tom Emmer survived the most epic smear campaign in Minnesota history.
60. And that sort of behavior must not be rewarded.
61. Think about it; if Mark Dayton wins, all of ABM’s lies will be considered justified.
62. Because to the left, the end justifies the means – and since power is their end, this campaign will codify the means; lying, smearing, slandering.
63. And “power”, in this case, means not only the power to tax you back to the stone age, but to scupper the economy of this state for a generation.
64. Which, let us not forget, is yet another end that’d justify their means, if it succeeds. Because a state with lots of DFL dependants is a state with a happy DFL.
65. Because if Tom Emmer beats out this epic smear campaign, perhaps the Minnesota DFL and its lefty allies will learn some f****ng manners.
66. Because I don’t want the definition of “Marriage” decided by a bunch of moron legislators or bobbleheaded, agenda-driven judges.
67. Because if Emmer wins, free speech wins.
68. It was the “Citizens United” Supreme Court case that allowed corporations to contribute to political campaigns.
69. And so a raft of Minnesota companies contributed to “MNForward”, a pro-business PAC.
70. And a legion of howling lefty nutcases lined up to crucify these businesses…
71. …well, no.  They didn’t line up to slander and badger Polaris or Davisco or Securian.  They lined up to attack Target Corporation as “anti-gay”…
72. …even though Target is one of the most pro-equal-rights-for-gays companies in a state full of companies that bend over backwards to prove their “diversity”.   The attack wasnt’ because of anything Target did, but to try to bully and browbeat all Minnesota companies who dared to dissent from the DFL and their various hangers-on.
73. BTW, Tom Emmer is no more “anti-gay” than Barack Obama or, for that matter, Mark Dayton.
74. Because while the “Minnesota Miracle” of Minnesota Media Myth is indeed largely mythical, and would have happened anyway
75. But today, Minnesota needs a real miracle, and we need it now.
76. And real miracles come from the private sector…
77. …and the best thing government can do is stand out of the way – lending the odd helping hand (by, say, providing an educated and competent work force – ooops, sorry about that, Minnesota Federation of Teachers) and letting private enterprise and the market do the hard stuff.
78. Because while Governor Pawlenty has done a helluvva job keeping the wheels on this state, it’s only going to get more difficult as the Obama Depression grinds on.
79. And we have two more years of The One to survive; and electing a responsible, grownup, conservative government is a great first step in telling the rapacious federal regime “not so fast, bitches”.
80. Because it’s a big wave.
81. And if Emmer wins, then so will Michele Bachmann.
82. And Erik Paulsen.
83. And John Kline.
84. And since the Constitutional Officer races usually follow the governor’s race, an Emmer win will bring back Pat Anderson to State Auditor, replacing the fairly useless but boundlessly venal Rebecca Otto.
85. And Dan Severson could win, replacing Mark Ritchie, who was basically put into office to further George Soros’ grand scheme of having fifty in-the-bag secretaries of state.
86. And Chris Barden could become the Attorney General, giving us an AG that will work for Minnesota, rather than for Mike Hatch.
87. And if Emmer wins big, there’s a decent shot that Chip Cravaack will win as well – and Congress desperately needs Jim Oberstar to leave and go into the lobbyling business, where his heart really belongs.
88. And if Emmer wins, the coattails will help Randy Demmer, too; every little bit helps.
89. And of Tom and Chip take it downtown, then Lee Byberg will stand a decent chance of toppling Colin Peterson.
90. And if Tom, Chip, Randy and Lee pull it off, then the heretofore unthinkable – Teresa Collett knocking off Betty “Mission Accomplished” McCollum – is suddenly thinkable.
91. And Joel Demos might just be able to pack his wife and kids up and head off to DC as well.  Because we’re Minnesotans, and we do believe in Miracles.
92. And if that happens, somewhere on the campus of the Blake School, some mirthless harpy’s head is going to explode.
93. And some hard-scrabble Latina will make a few bucks cleaning up the mess, giving her the money to feed her kids and drive them to a good charter school,  where they become good educated citizens, who vote Republican…
94. …and help repeat the cycle…
95. …so that before too terribly long the DFL – the great destroyer of jobs, the albatross on the back of the Minnesota economy, the racist ravager of school choice, the thuggish apparatchik that wants to make sure you do no better than they do, will become a third party.  Like it so richly deserves.
96. Because I want Minnesota to be a good place for my children.
97. I don’t want Minnesota to become a Cold California, a windy Greece, a passive-aggressive Michigan, a “nice” Massachusetts.
98. And DFL rule merely ensures that that is exactly what will happen.
99. And conservative government is not just sane, stable government, it’s the key to a prosperous, sustainable state.  Even the parts that aren’t government.
100. Because it’s something you can do for A Better Minnesota.  All of us. Together.

So let’s make this happen.

Previous “100 Reasons” posts:

• 100 Reasons I’m Voting For Bush, Not Kerry
• 100 Reasons I’m Voting for the 2006 MNGOP slate
• 100 Reasons I’m Voting For McCain
• 100 Reasons I’m Voting For Eva Ng

As with most declarations about politics, it’s just not true:

And 1828 was worse…

As you go to the polls, remember – people call Republicans extreme.

And in one solitary sense, they’re right:

“Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice.  And moderation in defense of justice is no virtue”.

It’s a half hour speech – but if you have time, give it a look.  Though it’s 46 years old, much of it, if you leave out the references to long-gone politicians, the Cold War and Nikita Kruschev, and the spending figures which seem so ludicrously tiny today) is as dead-on today as it was the day it was broadcast.

“You and I have the courage to say to enemies there is a price we will not pay, and there is a point beyond which they must not advance…You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.  We’ll preserve for our children for this, the last best home for mankind, or sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness…we’ll remember that we have the right to make our own decisions, and to determine our own destiny”.

And that point is today.

28 years ago, when I was working at my first country-western radio job, about the time the early eighties recession was at its deepest, I first heard this Merle Haggard song. It was in the “recurrent” bin – music the station had played for a good six months before I started – but never quite left the rotation.

And it captured the spirit of 1980 and 1981 was well as any song of the era…:

…and really, life in Minnesota, today, as well.

And if the Republicans sweep the nation?  Especially if Emmer wins?

I haven’t felt like that since 1991 – when the Berlin Wall fell.

And nothing captured that era better than this ditty:

Watching the nation wake up from that Obama buzz won’t be quite as fun as watching the USSR gurgle down the drain…

…but this is the battle we’ve been dealt.

I’m game!

Our elites thought these people were a bunch of crazy, out-of-control wingnuts, too.

There were those who thought these people were “too extreme for the times”:

And today, they – the media, the Twin Cities’ nagging, hectoring establishment – is telling that freedom, the market, individual initiative, getting government out of the way, is “extreme”, too.

“They” deserve the same answer “they” got 20 and 30 years ago.

America is afraid tonight.

Afraid that the great recession is far from over. Afraid the government, having pulled every lever in the cockpit, may not be able to save us this time.

Make no mistake, no matter what the results tomorrow, occupational anxiety will persist. High unemployment levels will not soon abate. Waves of foreclosures, bank and insurance company failures will pepper the landscape for months and maybe years to come while Obama administration policymakers chant eenie meenie miney moe.

Small businesses are wondering when the recovery will come in their mailbox. Many Americans are wondering when Obama and his people are finally going to show up and save them from their misery. Those that can see farther are afraid America itself may not be salvageable and that no one can save us from the misery to come.

The numbers are so large and the odds so long…they might be right.

Everybody knows the GOP is going to hand the DNC it’s ass tomorrow but I agree with Rasmussen.

…a fundamental rejection of both political parties.

More precisely, it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that’s lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve.

It’s not so much that America sees the GOP as the party that has the secret sauce. No. It’s more like right now they’re the cream of the crap.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Emmer and Paulsen and Hann and Stensrud and will be voting for conservatives across the board out here in the West. But the victories tomorrow night, and there will be many, will be empty for many of us that wonder if anyone anywhere has the stomach to make the decisions that America needs now.

Fact is, George Bush’s fiscal policies destroyed any claim the GOP had on fiscal reserve. And yet, Obama, belying thin hopes that his presidency would be more about ambition than ideology, drove the agenda so far left that it would be a conservative’s dream if it weren’t for the monumental damage it has done to our nation.

It took policies so wasteful, so misguided, so unpopular and on a scale so inconceivable to manifest a contrast with the GOP’s fiscal policies. It is solely stupefied disbelief that will drive Americans to vote for Republicans tomorrow in a proportion that may make statistical history.

To think that the GOP will soon be jettisoned back to 1994 politically was unthinkable just a few months ago.

We must hope – demand – that the opportunity this time won’t be equally squandered.

The NYTimes has a little web toy tracking Twitter traffic for various candidates over the past stretch of the campaign.

And if traffic is the measure of Minnesota’s race, then Tom Emmer wins big.  Here’s today’s snapshot:

If you go to the link and click Play”, you can get an animated historical record of the traffic.  Emmer has led pretty consistently.   As of today, conservatively, it’s a good 15:1.

Of course, elections are not decided on Twitter.  All good conservatives need to get out there and vote Emmer tomorrow.  Bring the kids.  Drive your (conservative-voting) neighbors.  (Leave the other ones at home).

See you at the polls tomorrow.

I moved to Minnesota 25 years ago.

I moved here because my home state, North Dakota, was mired in an epic farm depression – and even in the best of times, the job market for a guy with a BA in English and a drive to be a writer was dodgy.

I moved to find opportunity.  I worked my ass off, and eventually found it.

But I look at the Minnesota that a forty-year near-monopoly stranglehold of DFL control has had left behind – but for a few hopeful years in the past decade – and wonder “would I move here if I were getting out of college today?”

And “will my kids have any reason to stay here?”

Eight years ago, I might have said “absolutely’!” without reservation.  Sane adults were taking over.  Even Saint Paul had been run for quite some time by guys – Norm Coleman and Randy Kelly – who could focus on what mattered, at least by Saint Paul DFL standards.

But Minnesota’s sliding backwards.  Businesses are leaving.  And Mark Dayton’s entire goal is to make sure goverment wants for absolutely nothing.

It’s a recipe for decay, decline, and failure.  Ask the Greeks.  Ask California and New York.

It reminds me of the years not long before I moved to Minnesota.  The Carter years – the years of malaise and hopelessness.

What would America have given, in retrospect, to have avoided the years of malaise? Of hopelessness?  Of that feeling that we were rolling downhill like the proverbial snowball headed for hell?

We found our redemption, of course – in Reagan, in a way, but in a larger sense in rediscovering part of our nation’s soul.

So what will Minnesota choose?  Lining up like dutiful oxen to drag the wagon of government forward, groaning and creaking as the driver cracks the whip ever louder as the going gets tougher?

Or will it choose to again become the place that drew my great-grandparents from the old country, over 100 years ago – a place of opportunity, of untapped potential?  The place that spawned my paternal grandparents, where gumption and will and hard, hard work could lead one to a better place (even if that place was North Dakota, for a few generations?)  The place that has the potential to be for our kids what it was for me?

Mark Dayton is the candidate of stagnation.  Of decay and decline.  He is the driver on that oxcart.  He wants you to be good, compliant, oxen – happy to drag your days away for a Better Minnesota.

Tomorrow is your chance to choose better.

To choose growth over decay.

To choose the American, and Minnesotan, spirit over the soulless miasma of the bureaucracy.

To choose the spark of personal initiative, creativity and soul over the deadening hand of Big Mother Government.

To choose freedom, prosperity and happiness over lumpen gray satiation.

Vote Emmer.

Previous Reasons Emmer Should Be Governor

#2: Moving Minnesota Forward

#3: You And I

#4: Playing To Our Strengths

#5: The Overhaul

In case you missed them last week and over the weekend, I published by top five reasons Mark Dayton should not be governor.  Here are the links.  I’m a helpful guy.  That’s how I roll.

• #1: We don’t need more Malaise
• #2: Moving Minnesota Backward
• #3: Unexamined
• #4: Fool Us Three Times
• #5: We Are Better Than This

Of course, being a positive guy, I followed in each case with five more, more important reasons that Tom Emmer should be governor.  Here we go:

• #1: It’s The Hope!
• #2: Moving Minnesota Forward
• #3: The Overhaul
• #4: Buck The Narrative
• #5:  Our Better Nature

Among the maze of down-ticket races on my ballot is the Ramsey County Attorney race.

The race currently pits John Choi – a higher-up at the Saint Paul City Attorney’s office, and therefore part of the Saint Paul DFL machine, and hand-picked successor to former DFL gubernatorial hopeful Susan Gaertner – against David Schultz, who takes pains to point out that he is not the same Dave Schultz who is the poli-sci professor at Hamline University.

Schultz points out something interesting in a campaign email:

On some of [Choi’s] lawn signs in the city, he displays his DFL endorsement; on his lawn signs in the suburbs, he does not. In the literature he sends to Democrats he prominently displays his DFL endorsement and quotes Mayor Chris Coleman; in his literature sent to others, he conceals the DFL endorsement and his ties to the party.

Schultz points out…:

I send the same literature to everyone – Democrat, Republican, and Independent. I don’t change who I am depending on my audience.

Is it a sign that the DFL brand is past its shelf-life in the ‘burbs?

We’ll find out tomorrow.

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.

Yesterday, we examined how Mark Dayton would endeavor to move Minnesota backward – to try to go Back to the Seventies for its economic model.

And that’s if everything goes perfectly – which it can not.

But it’s so much worse than that.

Mark Dayton, and the Democratic Farmer/Labor Party, wants Minnesota to not only look backwards forty years for its model – but they want Minnesota to look at the sidewalk in front of its feet as it shuffles forward into history.

The DFL in Minnesota – and the state’s once-very-liberal Republican party – have a vision of government that, to take the Dayton campaign at its word, has three messages:

3. Attack the most convenient scapegoats. During tough economic times, “the rich” are a convenient set of scapegoats.

2. Focus on short-term outcomes: The old saying goes “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; show a man how to fish, he eats forever”.  Mark Dayton’s campaign is all about creating a large, elaborate, unionized and exquisitely expensive infrastructure to hand out fish in all its metaphorical forms, while making the art of fishing that much harder for them to master.

1. Above all, keep government fat and happy. Mark Dayton’s axiom for Minnesota, if you take  his campaign at face value, is this; satisfying the wants of Minnesota’s professional and vocational Governing Class is the supreme mission of government.

And history shows us that a state – in the general or United sense – that focuses on these priorities can not survive, much less thrive.

At the very least, these priorities pound society into a master-servant relationship – with government as the master.  A benevolent master, mostly, doling out little bits of satisfaction – fish, if you will – to keep the peasants mollified, but a master nonetheless.

Like a cattledriver and his cattle.

Are you happy to moo for a better Minnesota?

Minnesota deserves better.

Because in its truest form, America is about better.  America in its truest form is not a bunch of serfs serving its lords and masters.  It is a free association of equals, governing itself by consent of the governed, with a government that takes care of its appointed roles and otherwise gets the hell out of the way.

Mark Dayton, at his very best, is a throwback to an era that not only can not come back – it must not come back.

So tomorrow, Minnesota, let us deserve better.

Previous Reasons Dayton Should Not Be Governor

• #2: Moving Minnesota Backward
• #3: Unexamined
• #4: Fool Us Three Times
• #5: We Are Better Than This

I didn’t pay much attention to last week’s video of Betty McCollum conspicuously avoiding saying “Under God” when leading the Pledge of Allegiance back in 2002.  The shelf life had passed for quite some time.

But McCollum’s reaction?  From Taranto in the WSJ, this was in her press release.  Emphasis is added:

Conservatives are using an eight year old video clip to incite hate, racism, and intolerance among Tea Party Republicans. This right-wing effort to call into question Congresswoman McCollum’s Christian faith, her belief in God, and her patriotism is blatantly anti-American and all too similar to the extremists who earlier this year mailed a soiled American flag to her Congressional office and threatened the Congresswoman with violence.

Racist?

Here’s Betty McCollum:

Rep. McCollum

She’s as much a cracker as I am.   Or is she claiming reverse-racism from a Tea Party that is a whooooole lot more ethnically-mixed than current lefty chanting points would have you believe?

We just don’t know.

And “Un-American?”

I can see Rep. McCollum leading a “House Unamerican Activities Committee” hearing in 2011; “Are you now or have you ever been a member of a Tea Party affiliated organization?”

One good way to prevent that, of course, would be to eject her from office tomorrow.

Betty McCollum thinks Al Quaeda is no longer a threat (from Betty McCollum Needs Change):

“Al Qaeda no longer poses a threat to the United States.”

That’s a fascinating conclusion.

Watch McCollum with her opponent, Teresa Collett, at their Health Care debate.

Watch McCollum trying to defend her role in the Health Care debate (starting around 1:27).  Remember when lefties (wrongly) said Sarah Palin was an intellectual flyweight for writing speaking notes on her hand?  McCollum reads administration chanting points from a piece of paper.

Got concerns about your future, young Minnesotans?  Betty will blow sunshine up your skirt!

The Fourth District deserves better.

The top ten moments of Congressman Oberstar’s peformance from the debate last week with Chip Cravaack

You gotta ask yourself, CD8 – how much contempt for you and your beliefs do you find acceptable?

Keith Ellison crashes the Minnesota Majority’s “Election Integrity Watch” press conference.

(Note:  Lefties are repeatedly getting this video taken off Youtube by reporting it as “abusive”.  Why do they hate the First Amendment?  Why do you hate keeping “representatives” accountable?)

He gets busted in a lie – at 4:03, about his appearance in a video at 3:45.  Someone at either his office, the DFL, the Uptake or one of their affiliated groups doctored an Election Integrity Watch poster to make it look like an anonymous posting intended to intimidate.

And starting at 4:12, you can see what a brittle, cranky little fella the Congressman is.  Someone asks him “who stands to benefit from not having photo ID”.  Ellison answers “Well, my press conference is now over”.

“You’re my congressman! I can’t ask you a question?”, she continues.  Someone else chimes in “You get to decide which questions we can ask?”

Ellison stalks off the mic. “To the press”, he responds.

This is your “representative” in the Fifth District.  Someone who can’t handle a tough question – as I found out  last year when I asked him if he repudiated the parts of the Hamas charter that called for destroying Israel and exterminating the Jews.  His first response was “how many Palestinians do you know” (five, if you go back to college), and it went downhill from there.

Someone who needs to scamper back to the welcoming, friendly arms of the in-the-bag press when things get tough.

What do you call someone who takes his swings at people, and then scampers away when they can hold him accountable?  A bully?

The Fifth District deserves better.