Star Tribune
Minnesota braces for election year misinformation
Minnesota voters expect the best. So Minnesota election officials prepare for the worst.
Disinformation. Cyberattacks. Dirty tricks. Threats. Atrocious weather.
Election officials from 50 counties met with FBI and Homeland Security officials at the National Guard training center in Camp Ripley this month. For hours, they ran through scenarios, planning responses to the worst 2024 could throw at us.
On the other side of the country, AI-generated robo-Bidens were cold-calling into New Hampshire, urging residents not to vote.
“It’s the same old poison in a different bottle,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said.
Early voting is underway in Minnesota’s presidential primary. So far, so good. Not a deepfake or robo-Biden in sight. Possibly because Minnesota just made it a misdemeanor to deliberately spread disinformation within 60 days of an election.
This is a state with the highest voter turnout in the nation. Minnesotans take voting seriously.
But Minnesota has seen firsthand how bad a worst-case election scenario can be. In September 2020, a company in Tennessee posted a job opening, asking former members of the military to come to Minnesota and “help” law enforcement guard the polling places. Bring guns.
“I went out and barnstormed the state,” said Simon, who kept reminding everyone of Minnesota’s very sane and normal election rules. “No, the only people allowed within 100 feet of a polling place are voters, election workers and anyone who normally works in that building — a school, a church, whatever. You can’t just show up with your gun.”
As long as there have been elections, there have been dirty tricks. Technology just spreads the lies faster.
Simon remembers two decades ago, when hand-printed flyers leafleted some Milwaukee neighborhoods, telling residents that if their last name started with the letters A-L, they should vote on Tuesday, and if their name was in the back half of the alphabet, they were supposed to go to the polls on Wednesday.
Now technology has given us artificial-intelligence tech that can make phone calls and videos sound like anything and look like anyone. A recent deepfake video featured Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis apparently conceding his presidential campaign last September. You had to look closely to realize “DeSantis” never seemed to take a breath.
“All of us who are involved in elections and the administration of America’s elections are nervous,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota.
Misinformation has always been a threat to our elections. Now those lies, Jacobs said, are bolstered by videos, photos and documents that look and sound credible, even when they’re not.
“That’s what AI has done,” he said. “It’s taken an age-old threat of rumors and lies and weaponized it in a way we’ve never seen.”
That includes the flat-out lies about election fraud you may have heard your neighbors screaming about at public meetings. No, the voting machines aren’t switching your vote. Minnesota uses paper ballots and if you were around in 2008, you know that this is a state willing to re-examine every single one just to make sure your vote counts.
There is an entire corner of the Secretary of State’s website dedicated to separating election facts from election fiction. No, there weren’t more votes cast in Minnesota than registered voters. Yes, there are people on the voter rolls with a birth date listed as “1900,” but that doesn’t mean they’re fake voters — that’s just a placeholder date for anyone who registered to vote before 1983 and hasn’t moved since.
There is hope, if you look for it. You can find it at the University of Minnesota, where the Certificate in Election Administration has become one of the most in-demand online courses of its kind in the country.
Minnesota needs 30,000 workers to step up and help run the elections this November. They always step up. Election workers showed up for us during the pandemic, before we had a vaccine. When you step up to your polling place this year, they’ll be there for you again.
Star Tribune
Long Prairie, MN school board dismisses its superintendent, the latest controversy in this small town
LONG PRAIRIE, MINN. — The school district superintendent dressed up as the school mascot, Thor, on football nights. He read the graduation address in both English and Spanish. He even set up office hours in the cafeteria, granting easier approachability to students.
But now, two months into the school year, Daniel Ludvigson is gone. Or, rather, “on special assignment,” according to the terminology of the Long Prairie-Grey Eagle School Board, which voted 4-3 earlier this month to remove him as superintendent. The move came weeks after voting to not renew his contract, which expires at the end of the school year in June.
Four board members — two of whom voted to oust Ludvigson, including Board Chair Kelly Lemke — are up for re-election next week.
The dismissal is the latest blow in this central Minnesota community on the edge of the prairie. Over the last nine months, the town of 3,400 residents and seat of Todd County has lost its mayor, a city manager, two school board members, and now its superintendent.
Students walked out earlier this month in support of Ludvigson. Signs in support of Ludvigson can be seen across town on the lawns of apparent Democrats and Republicans alike. And last week, hundreds packed the American Legion off Hwy. 71 to eat beef sandwiches and sign support letters for Ludvigson, who only swung by to pick up his child for hockey practice.
In a time of great divide in America, this fight has nothing to do with politics.
“You’ve got Harris buttons and Trump hats side-by-side, arm-in-arm,” said Amanda Hinson, a former local newspaper reporter who is concerned the board is not being upfront about why they placed Ludvigson on special assignment. “We want transparency in our government.”
Lawn signs around Long Prairie, Minn., now include people weighing in on the dismissal of Superintendent Daniel Ludvigson by the school board. (Christopher Vondracek)
School board members say Ludvigson has repeatedly shown he is not ready for the prime time of a school district bigger than the one in central North Dakota he arrived from two years ago. They have twice disciplined Ludvigson, but did not state the reason for placing him on “special assignment,” beyond insinuating that staff are fearful to raise official complaints.
Rain and potentially heavy snow are on tap Thursday around the Twin Cities, just before families set out for Halloween trick-or-treating.
Temperatures were expected to drop throughout the day, creating conditions for flurries. A winter weather advisory is in effect from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. covering the Twin Cities metro area and parts of south-central Minnesota. Steady rain drenched the Twin Cities on Thursday, making for a soggy morning commute.
“As colder air begins to move in this morning, the rain will transition to heavy snow from west to east with snowfall rates of an inch per hour at times into early afternoon,” the National Weather Service in Chanhassen said in a weather advisory.
The Twin Cities and surrounding areas could get between 2 and 4 inches of snow, according to the weather service. The winter weather advisory is expected to affect Anoka, Chisago, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, Washington and Le Sueur counties.
It’s unclear how much of the snow will actually stick, with warm surface temperatures likely leading to melting on contact in many areas.
“Exact totals will depend on snowfall rate, surface temperatures, and melting — which increases uncertainty with the snow forecast,” the weather service said in an early Thursday briefing.
“Thundersnow possible!” the weather service emphasized.
The good news for Halloween revelers is that the snow and rain are expected to wrap up in time for trick-or-treating, though temperatures will remain in the 30s with a sharp windchill.
An off-duty Washington County sheriff’s deputy caused a head-on crash while under the influence of alcohol and injured a couple in the other vehicle, officials said.
The crash occurred about 10:40 a.m. Sunday in Afton on Hwy. 95 at Scenic Lane, the Minnesota State Patrol said.
Campbell Johnston Blair, 58, of Hastings, was heading north in his Subaru Crosstrek, crossed into the opposite lane and collided with a southbound Ford Expedition, the patrol said.
Blair and the other vehicle’s occupants, 38-year-old Erik Robert Sward and 36-year-old Heather Lynn Sward, both of Lake Elmo, were taken to Regions Hospital with non-critical injuries, according to the patrol.
The patrol noted the alcohol use by Blair was involved in the crash.
Blair, who was driving a private vehicle at the time of the crash while off-duty, has been a deputy with the Sheriff’s Office since 2020 and is currently assigned to our Court Security Unit.
The Sheriff’s Office has been asked for reaction to the crash involving one of its deputies.
Suspect “led us to the evidence” in Montana camper’s brutal killing, initially thought to have been bear attack
Long Prairie, MN school board dismisses its superintendent, the latest controversy in this small town
Snow and rain on Halloween
Suspect “led us to the evidence” in Montana camper’s brutal killing, initially thought to have been bear attack
Long Prairie, MN school board dismisses its superintendent, the latest controversy in this small town