Minnesota Supreme Court says Hennepin County incorrectly picked GOP absentee board judges

The Minnesota Supreme Court said Hennepin County has to directly reach out to people on a political party’s list of potential election judges to fill absentee ballot boards overseeing early voting, rather than rely on cities to contact them.

State law requires a bipartisan balance of Republican and Democratic Party election judges to oversee voting at polling places on Election Day and processing of absentee ballots at a county elections office. These boards verify information on the signature envelopes that absentee ballots are returned in, and review new voter registrations submitted with ballots.

Republicans and the Minnesota Voters Alliance filed a petition Oct. 16 to the state Supreme Court, which handles election-related challenges, arguing Hennepin County incorrectly bypassed a list of 1,500 potential GOP election judges for the absentee ballot board.

In response to the state Supreme Court ruling released Tuesday, Hennepin County Auditor Daniel Rogan said they emailed all of the people on the Republican list Wednesday to see if they want to serve as election judges on the absentee ballot board.

Most election judges work only on Election Day and Rogan noted that Hennepin County cities typically exhaust the party lists of possible judges and “needed to recruit thousands of additional election judges who are not on the major political party list.”

County absentee ballot boards work throughout the 46-day early voting period.

Ginny Gelms, the county’s election manager, said most oversight of absentee voting in Hennepin County is done by assistant county administrators. State law only requires partisan election judges to be involved when the information a voter provides on their absentee ballot is in question.

Those discrepancies occur with about 50 ballots a week, so Hennepin County typically shares its bipartisan panel of election judges with Minneapolis.

But the court said the county cannot rely on cities alone and also needs to reach out directly to prospective judges from lists provided by political parties for the absentee ballot board. Rogan noted that the court said the county’s ballot board was operating with party balance.

Republicans applauded the Supreme Court ruling, with state party chair David Hann calling it a “huge win for election integrity in Minnesota.”

“The court’s order made clear that there is no ambiguity in the law — Hennepin County cannot bypass the party’s list of election judges. All counties in Minnesota should be on notice,” Hann said in a statement.

He noted that so far this election cycle, 263,435 absentee ballots have been received by the county and 209,306 were accepted by the absentee ballot board.

While the absentee board had party balance, it did not include anyone from the Republican Party’s election judge list. Hennepin is Minnesota’s most populous county, with more than 1.2 million residents and nearly 821,000 registered voters.