Secretary of State Mark Ritchie is being sued in the state Supreme Court by the group Minnesota Majority, several Republican legislators and others over alleged vote discrepancies in the 2008 election.
The suit, filed Thursday, says that the state's voter registration system has not been adequately updated and that vote totals from canvassing boards exceed the stated number of registered voters by 406,398. Ritchie disputed the claims.
"We don't want to take this step," said Rep. Mark Buesgens, R-Jordan, referring to the lawsuit at a State Capitol news conference. "But it is the last step in a democracy."
The suit is based on research by Minnesota Majority, a "traditional values" advocacy group that compared the statewide registration system to the 2008 State Canvassing Board report.
By federal law, the voter registration system is supposed to be updated immediately after an election, and state law says updates should occur within six weeks. But, according to Minnesota Majority, 17 counties hadn't filed any reports to the registration system, and another eight, including Hennepin and Ramsey, reported more ballots than they had registered voters. Election officials in the counties are also targets of the suit.
Ritchie responds
Ritchie said Thursday that his office updated voter registration lists in April and continues to do so. "All lists are updated every day of the week," he said. "People die, people move. The counties continuously update the lists."
He said the goal was to match voter registration and the certified canvassing board totals within 1,000 names. "You'll never get a perfect correlation between the two," he said. "We were at 40,000 in April. We're at about 30,000 now."
