Minnesota election officials fired a ballot delivery worker last week after Republicans discovered unsecured ballots in the back of his van.
On Oct. 18, a man walking through the Edina City Hall parking lot spotted a Hennepin County delivery van with the rear door ajar. There were about a dozen boxes of unsecured ballots in the back of the van.
“This is just impossible.”
surveillance video show The unsecured ballots were left in the parking lot for nearly 10 minutes.
Witness who took a photo of the unsecured ballot told KSTPTV He expressed concerns about a fair election, telling the news station: “This is just not possible.”
The day after the witness found the ballot, Hennepin County officials issued a statement It acknowledged that a “protocol violation” had occurred.
“Procedures for transporting ballots require that they remain secure at all times, and Hennepin County alerted delivery personnel to this incident,” county officials said. “Hennepin County acknowledges that this code violation occurred, should not have occurred, and is unacceptable. Corrective actions are being taken by the county and its carrier to prevent it from happening again.”
Officials also fired election workers who left ballots unsecured.
Because of the security breach, Hennepin County officials inspected the unsecured ballots and determined they were all legitimate.
The statement explains:
Hennepin County determined that all scheduled ballots were filled out and no evidence of tampering was found in the sealed transfer case. This is done by comparing the ballots received from the delivery company to a record of all absentee ballots received by the city in the statewide voter registration system. The comparison demonstrated a 100% match. This step is routine in the ballot integrity process and occurs at every transfer.
County staff also inspected individual ballots and confirmed that the absentee ballot envelopes in the cases were received in sealed condition. This inspection is also a regular election integrity process.
Meanwhile, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon (Democratic) said Although the incident was “totally unacceptable,” he nevertheless chalked it up to a “teachable moment.”
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