Star Tribune
Here’s how to vote in the 2024 election in Minnesota
With a few exceptions, anyone who is a U.S. citizen, is at least 18 years old and has lived in Minnesota for 20 days immediately before Election Day on Nov. 5 is eligible to vote. Exceptions include someone under a court-ordered guardianship in which the right to vote has been revoked, or a person determined by a court to be legally incompetent to vote. People can’t vote while incarcerated for a felony. Under a new law, once they are released, they are eligible to vote.
You have until Oct. 15 to register to vote before the general election, but if you missed that deadline, you can provide proof of residence at an in-person voting location on Election Day. If you don’t have proof of residence, a registered voter from your precinct can go with you to the polling place to sign an oath confirming your address.
No. Minnesota does not have political party registration, meaning you do not have to publicly declare affiliation with a party when you register to vote.
There are many layers of security around the mail-in balloting process, including the fact that voters must include their Social Security or ID information to order an absentee ballot. There are also checks in the system to make sure a ballot is counted correctly on Election Day, including accuracy tests for ballot-counting machines and post-election audits.
ST. CLOUD – Sherburne County officials said Saturday the county will pay for the recount of a close legislative contest, in an effort to quash rumors about how ballots were counted on election night and uploaded to the Minnesota Secretary of State website.
On Thursday, county officials announced updated vote counts that widened the gap between DFL Rep. Dan Wolgamott and Republican challenger Sue Ek, in a race that could have implications for which party controls the House.
The totals were updated after county staffers identified absentee ballots that were counted on election night but weren’t included in the unofficial totals posted to the Secretary of State’s website, due to an “an incomplete transfer of data from [one] scanner to the state election reporting system,” according to Sherburne County Administrator Bruce Messelt.
In a release Saturday, Messelt said: “Contrary to circulating rumors, no votes were ‘lost’ and none were ‘found.’ ” He said all ballots cast were properly received, documented and counted, “and chain of custody maintained.”
However, he said, some ballot totals failed to upload to the Secretary of State’s website “due to an improperly cleared or partially damaged memory card that did not fully collect and transmit results from some of the processed mail-in ballots.” The memory card subsequently sent some generic data designed to test the reporting system prior to the election, creating “inflated vote totals that later decreased once the error was discovered.”
On Wednesday morning, the Secretary of State’s Office showed Wolgamott had a 28-vote lead over Ek. Updated results now show a difference of 191 votes, with Wolgamott having 50.36% of the vote and Ek 49.4%.
The change prompted Minnesota Republican Party Chair David Hann to call for the Secretary of State’s Office to investigate the results of the District 14B race and pay for a recount.
In a release Friday, Hann said initial reports on election night had Ek winning by four votes with 100% of the precincts reporting. Shortly after that, results showed her losing by 28 votes.
One person is dead after a police shooting Saturday afternoon in St. Paul’s West Seventh neighborhood.
According to St. Paul police, the shooting occurred just after 1:45 p.m. at the intersection of Bay Street and Watson Avenue. No officers were injured, according to the department.
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating, and authorities were expected to share more details at a press event.
Saturday’s shooting comes nearly two weeks after St. Paul officers shot an armed man charged with killing three people at a Minneapolis homeless encampment. Earl Bennett, 40, was listed in critical but stable condition after the shooting remains in custody.
Bennett was charged with three counts of second-degree murder for shooting three people in a tent before fleeing. He was also charged with attempted first-degree murder for a shooting at a Minneapolis sober home.
This is a developing story. Check back with startribune.com for further information.
Authorities have arrested and charged a man for trying to sneak nearly 5 pounds of fentanyl through Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Eduardo Alexander Santillan-Rivera, 24, was charged Monday by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office with first-degree sale of drugs and importing a controlled substance across state lines. He appeared in court Tuesday, and his next hearing is set for Nov. 25.
Santillan-Rivera remained in custody Saturday with bail set at $200,000. According to the charges:
Airport police became suspicious about a package arriving at MSP from San Bernardino, Calif., on Oct. 31, and had a drug detection dog inspect it. When the dog confirmed their suspicions. police drafted a warrant to investigate the contents.
They found nearly 5 pounds of fentanyl. Two milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and there are 453,592 milligrams in a pound.
Officers traced the package to the 2300 block of Garfield Avenue in Minneapolis, and left it there on Nov. 1 to see who would claim it. According to the charges, Santillan-Rivera arrived in a black sedan at around 11:40 a.m. to pick up the package. He walked it back to his car before police arrested him.
Santillan-Rivera at first said he was just stealing the package and didn’t know what was inside, but later admitted that he lied. He told investigators that a Mexican drug trafficking organization had paid him to move the package and that the same organization had paid him in the past to move cash and other deliveries. He added that he wanted to return home to Mexico.
