Where does Republican paranoia about voter fraud come from? Minnesota Sen. Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson, recently argued “millions of Americans are now lacking trust in our (voting) system” and that “one of the fastest and easiest ways we can restore their faith and protect the rights of all legal voters” is to require government-issued voter ID at the ballot box.

The facts about voter fraud in American elections ought to soothe Sen. Newman’s fears — President George W. Bush’s Justice Department found that voter fraud only accounted for 0.00000132 percent of all votes cast in federal elections. More recent investigations in 2016 revealed only four invalid votes out of more than 136 million federal votes cast.

Newman’s paranoia does not come from Minnesota’s reality, as no credible evidence of voter fraud was found to exist in recent elections. However, voters heard credible accusations regarding the Minnesota GOP’s recruitment of third party candidates to draw voters away from Democrats during the entire fall of 2020.

Admissions from Congressional District 2 candidate Adam Weeks and from legal marijuana advocate Sammy McCarty revealed that the Minnesota GOP used pro-marijuana parties to siphon votes from Democrats. Suspicion also swirled around relationships between Minnesota GOP Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan, her husband Rep. Jim Hagedorn, and Bill Rood — the pro-marijuana third-party candidate who entered the CD-1 race between incumbent Hagedorn and DFL candidate, Dan Feehan.

In light of how Black, brown and young voters influenced the national election in favor of Democrats, and that those populations are among the least likely to have often-expensive, government-issued voter ID, it stands to reason that Minnesota Republicans’ “paranoia” of voter fraud is projection — and another scheme to cheat.

Misti Harper

St. Peter

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