Socialist ballot-stuffing? Radicals taking control by any means necessary? Minnesota Democrats running an incompetent election? Whoda thunk it?
Oh, let’s not always see the same hands …
The Minneapolis mayoral race made national headlines after Democratic Socialist Omar Fateh somehow won the city DFL’s convention endorsement over incumbent Jacob Frey. It came not long after fellow DSA candidate Zohran Mamdani legitimately won the Democrat primary in New York City for their upcoming mayoral general election, and suggested that the Democrat Party had fully embraced radical Marxism.
A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, or the US Bank Stadium, if you will. The state DFL took a closer look at the process of vote counting at the convention. The investigation exposed shenanigans profound enough that the DFL will un-endorse Fateh, and may invalidate all results of the convention at some point:
The Minnesota DFL will revoke the local party’s endorsement of state Sen. Omar Fateh in the Minneapolis mayor’s race, according to several people with knowledge of the decision.
Fateh, a democratic socialist challenging Mayor Jacob Frey, won the endorsement at the end of a raucous July convention that prompted dozens of challenges amid delays and miscounted votes.
The state party’s Constitution, Bylaws and Rules Committee reached a decision on Tuesday, according to sources, and plans to release its findings publicly on Friday.
For those who do not know Minnesota’s arcane electoral systems, this has no legal impact on Fateh’s candidacy. Minnesota has endorsing conventions, but that does not provide exclusive access to the ballot. In fact, the state uses both caucuses and primaries, and it is not unusual for candidates who lose the endorsement fight at the convention to remain on the ballot. For mayoral races in Minneapolis, the endorsement only matters politically, and even then its value is probably questionable.
The actual general election is an all-in affair with instant run-off voting on November 4th of this year, and both Fateh and Frey will be on the ballot regardless of the DFL endorsement or its withdrawal. There are five DFL candidates on the ballot among the fifteen challengers, zero Republicans, three declared independents, and one each from the Momunists and Socialist Workers ‘parties’.
In other words, it’s fifteen flavors of crazy in Minneapolis, and Frey may be the only one with a butterfly net.
Still, the city DFL’s endorsement does have political power, as the attention it received demonstrated. It also would have allowed Fateh to use party resources for his campaign. So what happened? KARE 11 lays out what the investigation from the state party found, including the exclusion of a large amount of votes in the first round:
The Minneapolis DFL said they experienced delays when counting the first ballot for mayor when the head teller experienced a medical emergency. An unaffiliated volunteer and teller observer then stepped in.
Some during the hearing also questioned why ElectionBuddy wasn’t used, which they called the gold standard. A respondent said it was too expensive, and the Minneapolis DFL Convention ended up using JotForm.
The state DFL has now put the city DFL on a two-year probation, although what that means is anyone’s guess. Maybe it’s double secret probation?
Whatever it means, the city DFL leadership is not happy about it:
Meanwhile, the Minneapolis DFL believes “the facts show that the convention’s results were legitimate and should be upheld” and that discarding the convention’s decisions “would undermine the integrity of the Party’s processes and the trust of its members.”
Well, they trusted you to count the vote properly and follow your own rules. Trust and processes are the problem, no? Scott Johnson looked at the investigation report and exposed more details about those failures:
Paragraph 2 of the draft findings establishes that there was an undercount of 176 votes on the first mayoral endorsement vote — the only one in which votes were counted. “Two things are abundantly clear” from the convention tabulation of the vote, the first of which is that the electronic voting system produced a highly inaccurate count and the second of which is that a third candidate should not have been eliminated from contention after the flawed first endorsement vote.
Paragraph 3 of the draft findings makes out that the entire Ward 5 credentials book was lost by the Minneapolis party causing delegates to have to reestablish delegate status. Additional findings in paragraph 3 make out numerous opportunities for cheating in the endorsement process that one would be a fool to think remained unused. …
What we have here is something like the expressive form of DFL governance in a one-party city and in the state during the 2023-2024 period of DFL dominance. Perhaps I should say that we have here is something like the expressive form of Democrat governance writ large.
Indeed. And when the Democratic Socialists take over the party at the state and national level, this corruption will be the norm rather than the exception. Meanwhile … I’ll be in Texas. Y’all.
Editor’s Note: Help us continue to report the truth about radical Marxist and corrupt politicians like Omar Fateh, Zohran Mamdani, the Squad, the Democrat Socialists, and the fraud they use to seize power.
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