Edina absentee ballots show no evidence of tampering after being left unattended in open trunk

A Hennepin County courier driver was fired after absentee ballots the driver was transporting were briefly left unattended in the back of a vehicle outside Edina City Hall on Friday. Surveillance footage shows no one tampered with the sealed boxes of ballots, according to a statement from Hennepin County.

Other checks by the city confirmed no ballots were lost or damaged, and no new ballots were found in the pile. The cases were left unattended for less than eight minutes, according to a review of the 18-minute surveillance video by a Minnesota Star Tribune reporter.

The ballot security issue was brought to light after a photo of ballot boxes in an open car trunk outside the city hall and police station was shared on X, by a local Republican group questioning the security of the ballots. The post was widely shared by conservative media outlets over the weekend.

In a statement, Hennepin County called it a “lapse” and “unacceptable” that absentee ballots were left unattended by the courier, who was collecting returned ballots from City Hall and transporting them to the county offices.

“Election security is of utmost importance, and leaving ballots unattended is simply unacceptable,” Hennepin County Auditor Daniel Rogan said in a statement. “An incident like this underscores the value of strong chain-of-custody processes, so that risk can be addressed and integrity can be verified.”

The post came as other Republican groups across the country are casting doubt on absentee voting and voter registration, including in Minnesota.

Last week, other Republican groups and conservative legal groups filed a petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court challenging Hennepin County’s process for selecting election judges for its absentee ballot board.

In Edina, every ballot was accounted for by matching records from the statewide voter registration system for absentee ballots received with the ballots that were in the cases, according to the city’s statement. That matching process happens with every transfer of ballots.

Early and absentee voting in Minnesota started Sept. 20.

According to the Secretary of State’s office, 337,633 ballots were accepted as of Oct. 17, the most recent data available. This year, 706,344 Minnesotans applied to vote absentee, far below the nearly 2.2 million absentee ballot requests for the 2020 general election.

Absentee ballots must be received by local election officials no later than 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 5.