State supreme court tosses out voting lawsuit

The Minnesota Supreme Court has thrown out a lawsuit filed in late May by the Minnesota Majority, a coalition of conservative legislators and others who claimed that the state’s voter registration system has not been updated adequately.

The lawsuit, which named Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and 31 Minnesota county auditors as defendants, also claimed that vote totals from canvassing boards in the 2008 election exceeded the stated number of registered voters by more than 40,000.

"On behalf of all dedicated election officials who help administer the best election system in the country, I thank the Minnesota Supreme Court for its careful and judicious review of this lawsuit and its decision to dismiss it," Ritchie said in a statement this afternoon. "We agree with the court’s findings that Minnesota Majority neither described nor identified any wrongful acts, omissions or errors, and we concur with the court’s decision to reject the lawsuit."

Under federal law, the state’s voter registration system is supposed to be updated immediately after an election, and state law says such updates should be done within six weeks, Minnesota Majority charged in its lawsuit that 17 counties hadn’t filed reports to the registration system, and another eight counties — including the two largest, Hennepin and Ramsey — reported more ballots than they had registered voters.

In addition to Minnesota Majority, which describes itself as a "traditional values" advocacy group, plaintiffs in the lawsuit were Jeffrey Davis, Daniel McGrath, Tom Emmer, Mark Buesgens, David Fitzsimmons, Jean Sanford, Cindy Pugh and Matt Dean. Emmer, Buesgens and Dean are all Republican state representatives.