WCCO 4 News reported on May 12 that Muse Mohamud Mohamed was found guilty of lying in to a federal grand jury about “abusing a process for submitting absentee ballots for other voters” during the primary election in August 2020.
He was accused of falsely stating that he had obtained three absentee ballots for the primary on behalf of three voters who, he said, then filled them out before he returned them to the election office.
Instead, he did not take any of the three ballots to the absentee voters named on the envelopes. None of the voters gave him the ballots to return.
MN Rep. Steve Drazkowski (R-Mazeppa) reported this past week about another Minnesota man convicted of committing voter fraud, this time in connection with the 2018 primary election in Minneapolis. In both cases, the illegal activity was associated with absentee ballots. In a video report released by the New House Republican Caucus, Drazkowski calls attention to the case of Abdihakim Amin Essa, a non-U.S. citizen, who was found to have illegally signed absentee ballots on four different occasions over a one-month period in the summer of 2018.
Steve Drazkowski goes on to make two points:
First, the justice system in Minneapolis does not take voter fraud seriously. The thirteen (13) felony counts against Mr. Essa were reduced to four (4), then converted to misdemeanors in a plea arrangement “that has the fraudster serving only 90 days in jail and paying a $78 fine. This case opens a window into ballot harvesting and ballot trafficking in our state.”
Second, “the media barely covered it.” When the local press did mention it, it was generally prefaced by a quote from a DFL election official, such as “Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon has said repeatedly that Minnesota's 2020 elections were fair and honest, with no credible evidence of significant voter fraud.”
The quote used to be “no credible evidence of voter fraud.” As cases continue to turn up on Steve Simon’s watch, he has started to qualify his statements. It is now “no credible evidence of significant voter fraud.” Not once does he acknowledge that every case of prosecuted fraud involves the easy access to and the loose checks on submitted absentee ballots.
Election integrity is essential to the credibility of our democratic process. The right to vote is unquestioned. That does not mean that it must be overly easy and unchecked.
