Star Tribune
What to do if your voter registration is challenged
Kirsten Johansen was puzzled when she went to cast her ballot on the first day of early voting and was told by an election worker that her registration had been challenged.
“I was shocked,” said Johansen, an Edina resident, who hasn’t moved and recently cast a ballot in the May special election for Hennepin County commissioner. She figured double-checking her registration for the general election was unnecessary.
“I thought, of course I’m registered, I just voted a couple of months ago,” she said. “I got there and the woman said, ‘Sorry, it appears you’re a challenged voter.’”
Johansen said she doesn’t know why her registration was challenged. It didn’t happen to two other members of her household.
Johansen is among a small group whose voter registrations are challenged each year because of a discrepancy in data the state collects and analyzes to ensure the voter rolls are accurate. Big jumps in registrations around important elections can lead to more challenged voters.
Minnesota election officials routinely compare voter registrations with data they receive from other state and federal databases such as Driver and Vehicle Services, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Health and court records, said Secretary of State Steve Simon.
Typically, a registration is challenged because a postal verification card sent to a voter’s home is returned as undeliverable. But it can also happen if someone doesn’t vote for four years, they move, show up registered somewhere else, the courts deem them ineligible for some reason or for other less common reasons.
“Challenged status is a constant churn,” Simon said. “They are either removed or added, depending on the information that we get.”
Star Tribune
As Trump threatens mass deportations, some rural areas that back him rely heavily on immigrant labor
Matt Bocklund, a Hudson, Wis., Republican activist said in a statement that the Biden administration’s border policies, along with the State Department’s refugee resettlement efforts, could lead to exploitation in the farming industry, where many refugees and immigrants are vulnerable because of weak labor protections and their legal status. That strains rural communities, many of which are already facing economic burdens, he said.
He suggests creating incentives for farmers to use only legal labor; offering tax incentives, job training and possibly wage subsidies to encourage American workers to fill jobs now held by immigrants; and penalizing farmers who hire undocumented workers while encouraging investment in automation through tax credits and subsidies.
In 2020, 62% of Buffalo County, home to Rosenow’s farm, went for Trump. And Wisconsin’s largest milk-producing counties also backed the GOP nominee by hefty margins. Trump lost the past two elections in Minnesota, but in Stearns County, the state’s largest milk producer, 60% of voters backed him
In the late 1990s, Rosenow recalled, it was a struggle to find workers: “The only people that would even respond to an ad were people that had major problems — work histories and stuff where they had dependency issues or they weren’t reliable. … Most Americans won’t work on farms.”
“We were desperate for help,” he said. “We turned to immigrants. And we didn’t want to do that; we didn’t know the language, and we didn’t know the culture … but once we did, we found out how wonderful they were, great workers, great people to be around and people you want to have as your neighbors.”
Today, 13 out of his 18 employees are Mexican. He fills out I-9 and W-4 documents for the workers and said they pay state and federal taxes “like everybody else.” Federal legislative efforts have repeatedly failed to allow dairy farm workers into the legal agricultural guest worker program under the H-2A visa.
Star Tribune
With Spike Lee actor, Penumbra’s ‘Basquiat’ channels painter whose piece fetched $110 million
Are these just coincidences or do they have deeper spiritual resonances? Smith’s juxtapositions give his thoughts away. For “Basquiat” is personal and loving, and filled with emotion, even as the performer delivers on a mostly bare stage with a lit crown painted by artist Seitu Jones.
Some have likened Basquiat’s prodigious output to jazz if the music erupted like paint onto canvas from the tough subway grilles of his native New York.
“Basquiat” nods to that soundscape. Smith teams with longtime collaborator Mark Anthony Thompson, whose sound design efficiently evokes the dancefloor where Smith and Basquiat first meet with an excerpt of Africa “Planet Rock.” Thompson also uses plinks and underscoring as well. These aural treatments, augmented by lighting designer Wen Chen Khoo’s aurora borealis color palette, help to propel Smith’s story.
In life, Basquiat the artist drew on encyclopedic influences, from music to literature, graffiti to Da Vinci. Through whispers and vocal tics, Smith draws us into the artist’s spirit. We listen hard, as if to hear the secrets of a figure who remains ineffable, perhaps not fully knowable, even as we take in the startling lyricism of his channeled genius.
When: 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 4 p.m. Sun. Ends Oct. 27.
Where: Penumbra Theatre, 270 N. Kent St., St. Paul.
The investigators identified Benness as the shooter and the others as well “through a combination of public and private security footage, license plate readers, witness interviews, and tireless investigative work,” a statement from San Diego police read.
About 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, St. Cloud police found Benness and arrested him while he was a passenger in a vehicle at the intersection of 10th Avenue N. and 2nd Street N.
Atoria Elem told Channel 10-TV in San Diego that Soto was her cousin and was an Operations Specialist Seaman Apprentice assigned to the destroyer USS Pinckney.
“He had the option to basically go to college, join training school. However, he was very adamant about joining the Navy to serve his country,” Elem added.
In a posting on an online fund-raising page, Elem initiated on behalf of the family, she wrote, “Albert was training in the Navy in California, away from his hometown. A casual night out resulted in him losing his life to gun violence.”
