Star Tribune
Minnesota’s top elections official says ‘glitch’ in automatic voter registration system is fixed
ST. PAUL, Minn. — While there was a ‘’glitch’’ in Minnesota’s new automatic voter registration system, Secretary of State Steve Simon said Thursday that nobody who was ineligible voted in the August primary as a result of the problem.
That had been one of the questions that Minnesota Republicans last week said was still hanging after Simon and other state officials said they had made changes to the system after flagging around 1,000 potentially problematic registrations.
Minnesota’s new system went live in April. Residents who apply for state-issued IDs such as driver’s licenses are now automatically registered to vote without having to opt in, assuming they’re eligible to vote. And 16- and 17-year-olds can preregister to vote once they turn 18.
After discovering documentation problems, Simon said, workers at the Department of Public Safety, which issues driver’s licenses, then did a hand review of all those automatic registrations, which totaled around 100,000. Out of an ”abundance of caution,” he said, about 1,000 registrations were deactivated. Those people will be notified that they have to reregister.
”The law is crystal clear. The law says this has to be airtight,” Simon said at a news conference ahead of Friday’s start of early voting in Minnesota. The state, along with Virginia and South Dakota, will be the first in the country to begin in-person voting in the 2024 presidential election.
Two people at the Department of Public Safety, not just one, will now review every application to make sure everything is in order before the applicants are added to the voter rolls, Simon said. He said that should prevent any ineligible people from being improperly automatically registered and allowed to vote in November.
”I have every reason to believe that these steps that the Department of Public Safety has adopted will lead to that outcome. In other words, that we won’t have the kind of glitch we saw, and then we won’t have someone inadvertently or otherwise who’s not supposed to vote voting,” he said.
The lead Republican on the Minnesota Senate Elections Committee, Sen. Mark Koran, of North Branch, said he appreciated the changes but called for stronger checks for all voters.
A leader in the Feeding Our Future scheme pleaded guilty Thursday to wire fraud and admitted to receiving $11.4 million that he claimed was going to meals for low-income children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Haji Osman Salad, 34, appeared Thursday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud. His other charges, related to wire fraud and money laundering, will be dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
In 2020, Salad started Haji’s Kitchen, a Brooklyn Park-based company that claimed to serve 15.7 million free meals to low-income children between June 2020 and March 2022. The company received millions in federal funding intended to reimburse them for meals. But only a “minimal portion” of the meals they reported were actually served, according to the charges. Millions of dollars instead went to personal uses, such as properties and vehicles, U.S. Assistant Attorney Matthew Ebert said at the hearing.
As part of the agreement, Salad is required to pay back the $11.4 million he received in restitution. He also agreed to forfeit the properties and vehicles he bought with fraud money. His plea came a day after co-defendant Sharmarke Issa, 42, also changed his plea to guilty on one count of wire fraud.
Salad admitted to taking at least $2 million in federal funds for himself to purchase properties, and $400,000 for vehicles. The vehicles included Mercedes and Land Rover SUVs, according to charges.
The defendant admitted to creating shell companies, such as US Halal Foods LLC, that were not actually involved in the food business and were used to launder money as part of the scheme.
In all, Salad was responsible for $19 million in lost funding from the Federal Child Nutrition Program, Ebert said in court.
Salad is the 20th person to plead guilty in the Feeding Our Future federal fraud case, out of the 70 defendants charged in Minnesota so far. Prosecutors have called it one of the largest pandemic-era fraud cases in the United States. The defendants are charged with stealing more than $250 million from federal food programs that reimbursed nonprofits, schools and day cares for feeding low-income children.
Following the group’s announcement, the Harris-Walz campaign said the governor met with families of American hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas during his visit to Washington, D.C. Thursday. During their meeting, he assured them that he and Harris would try to get them released while reaffirming their commitment to Israel’s security.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has worked closely with the Uncommitted Movement said Thursday she hopes the Harris-Walz campaign will continue to have a dialogue with them.
“My hope still remains that Harris and Walz would take this offer, to win their their votes,” she said in an interview on Capitol Hill.
Omar also said she plans to continue to support the Harris-Walz ticket regardless of the group’s decision.
A Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson said the vice president remains committed to ending the war in Gaza.
“She will continue working to bring the war in Gaza to an end in a way where Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination,” a campaign spokesperson said in a statement.
Star Tribune
Nine Stillwater prison staffers treated after exposure to synthetic drug used by inmates
Nine staff members at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater were treated at a hospital and released Thursday after being exposed to a synthetic drug, according to the state Department of Corrections.
The staffers reported feeling lightheaded and nauseous with increased heart rates, the department said in a news release. Eight staff members were taken to Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater by paramedics, and one was administered Narcan.
The incident began at about 7:45 a.m., when a staffer responded to a report of an inmate smoking an unknown substance in his cell and soon began to feel ill. A short time later, three other staffers who had responded to the inmate began feeling sick, and two of them went to the hospital.
In a separate incident in the same housing unit, another inmate man threw a container with an unknown substance that landed near three staffers, who then began feeling ill and were taken to the hospital.
Investigators have not yet identified the substance, the department said.
The inmate caught smoking in his cell told investigators that it was a stronger than expected dose of synthetic marijuana. Officials said that another form of synthetic cannabinoids already had a presence in the facility because it can be purchased online and reach the facility’s population through mail.
“These synthetic substances are particularly dangerous because the chemical properties that comprise them are unknown and uncontrolled,” said Minnesota Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell in a statement. “We are prioritizing our investigative efforts to identify and prosecute those responsible for conspiring to introduce these substances into the secure correctional environment. For the safety of our staff, we are reviewing and updating our emergency response protocols to suspected drug use incidents.”
