With continuing claims of fraudulent elections from former President Donald Trump and his supporters going back to 2020, National Trump campaign officials and Minnesota Republican Party leaders are holding a Protect the Vote event in Chaska this Thursday.
"Do I think things happen every election? Yes. Do I think there's a massive conspiracy? No."
That's David Hann, Chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party who explains the purpose of the Protect the Vote Tour is to properly train individuals so there are no irregularities in the voting process.
"There are some jurisdictions that tend to ignore those laws, so we just want to make sure that there is adequate examination of the process," Hann told WCCO.
Hann says the law requires there's a political balance when looking at election results, but says that doesn't always occur.
"Sometimes it seems that our friends on the Democrat side are more interested in people voting and less interested in making sure they are eligible to vote," Hann claims. "That's a problem."
The Protect the Vote Tour is a nationwide effort by the Trump Campaign to make sure elections are "fair, accurate, secure, and transparent."
There has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Minnesota or across the country going back to the 2020 Election. Trump’s allegations of massive voting fraud have been refuted by a variety of judges, state election officials and an arm of his own administration’s Homeland Security Department. That also includes his own Attorney General Bill Barr.
"Our effort is to try to make sure that there are people who are watching the process and if there are things that are going on that don't seem right, that they have recourse of how to alert people to that, to investigate if necessary," Hann adds.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said on Thursday that people who become Election Judges are required to "check their politics at the door" and simply follow the rules. He says the state needs approximately 30,000 people to be Election Judges.
"People who do that job literally raise their hand and swear an oath to do just that, to be fair, to be objective, to be nonpartisan," says Simon. "If you can do that, I don't care what your politics are because we do need people."
Speaking to WCCO's Adam and Jordana, Simon adds that there is a party balance regulation at polling places to make sure things are fair and there are protections in place so one party can't pack a particular location. Not all volunteers have to assign themselves to a party, but Simon explains that there needs to be representation from both sides.
"But there has to be at least some critical mass in each polling place of both of the major political parties," he said. "So they can kind of keep an eye on each other and make sure everything's fair."
Each political party can send one representative to each location, and that number of one is strictly enforced. Simon says there are clear rules in place for that one person as well.
"Even if one party, Republican, Democrat, whoever over-recruited and got just a ton of people, they couldn't under state law sort of overrun the system and pack the place with their folks because there's that balance requirement.
"I welcome anyone who's going to recruit people as long as those people obey the rules of the law, which is, you got to be fair. This is not a place for politics or your political opinion," Simon said. "This is a place, on Election Day, to be fair to every voter."
Simon also says they have been totally transparent about how elections are held in Minnesota for those that are falsely claiming previous elections in the state were fraudulent. He says any wrongdoing found in the state over decades is microscopic.
"We have processes before during and after the election totally open to the public," says Simon. "They can come in, they can ask questions, they can make accusations, they can do any of that and I can go over every step of the way. From testing the election's equipment before the election to after the election. The post-election reviews that we do, two layers by the way, all 87 counties have to check the math basically. And then we do the same."
Simon adds that even after that, anyone can present challenges if they believe there was wrongdoing.
"Any citizen can go to court and say, 'I think you got it wrong, I have evidence that there was fraud, I have evidence that there was wrongdoing, I at least want a court to listen to this.' And so, look our record in recent history in Minnesota," Simon explained. There has been, I would say microscopic levels of wrongdoing, even attempts at wrongdoing in Minnesota. Our system is honest, it is clean and that's not just about when I've had this job. This is my predecessors of both parties in the last few decades. So we've got systems in place top to bottom that really make it really hard for people to get away with this kind of stuff."