Elections
Election Results: When will Minnesota’s ballots be counted by?
So far, this series of explainers has visited the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—looking at when each might release their election results. Now let’s visit the Land of 10,000 Lakes: Minnesota.
For an explanation about the difference between mail-in and absentee ballots, check out this piece here by Ben Wilson: The Difference Between Absentee and Mail-In Ballots.
Minnesota has been one of the most consistently Democratic states in the country. Like Michigan and Wisconsin, Minnesota forms part of the Democrats’ traditional “Blue Wall” of support in the Great Lakes region. The last time it voted for a Republican was for then-incumbent President Richard Nixon in 1972. In 1984, it and the District of Columbia were the only parts of the country to give the Democratic nominee, former Vice President Walter Mondale electoral votes. However, all that could change in a couple weeks.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the state by a razor-thin 1.5-point margin in 2016, a 44,593-vote difference between her and then-GOP nominee Trump. That’s a far cry from 2012, when then-President Barack Obama won the state by 8 points.
All of that being said, there’s a ton of pressure on humble Minnesota.
To prevent a backlog of ballots to count on Election Day, election workers have already begun counting absentee ballots. 60% of the requested absentee ballots in Ramsey County—where St. Paul is situated—have already been returned, CBS News 4 WCCO reports. So far, over 900,000 Minnesotans have voted.
How the ballot counting process works, according to deputy auditor Heather Bestler, is: “The ballots are scanned, the machine reads them and stores the information. Then, at 8 p.m. on election night, we hit tabulate. And that’s when we get all the results.”
According to the same WCCO report by Christiane Cordero, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, the state’s head of elections, has said that the state is in a relatively good position to turn in results quickly.
One thing to keep in mind is that a state court and Simon agreed to allow ballots to be counted that are postmarked on Election Day and received by clerks up to seven days afterward, in anticipation of the U.S. Postal Service being weighed down with ballots.
All things considered, most of the results could likely be released within the two weeks following November 3, assuming that things go as planned.
You can follow Douglas Braff on Twitter @Douglas_P_Braff.
On June 20, Special Counsel John Durham will testify appear before the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door briefing. The next day, he will testify in front of the Judiciary Committee about his 300-page reportdetailing his investigation into the FBI probe of alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian officials.
The news broke Friday that Durham will be testifying on the report, which found the Department of Justice and the FBI did not have “any actual evidence of collusion” between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Instead, the agencies began their Crossfire Hurricane investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” the report said. “Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.
The report also confirmed that the FBI did not give due consideration to the possibility that the Steele Dossier, which was used to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page, was Russian disinformation.
FBI leaders displayed “serious lack of analytical rigor,” according to Durham, and they relied significantly on. “investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents,” referring to staffers and allies of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whose campaign funded the Steele dossier through its law firm Perkins Coie.
National Review reminds readers, “The dossier was created by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele and accused Trump and his campaign aides of collaborating with Kremlin officials.”
Durham released his report nearly four years after then-attorney general Bill Barr tasked him with investigation the origins of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
The FBI responded to the report in saying that the “conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time.”
“Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented,” the bureau said. “This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.”
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