Amid swirling litigation around the country and attacks on the integrity of the 2020 vote, nearly all signs point to Minnesota being an oasis of calm during an otherwise chaotic and protracted election.
State elections officials received more than 4,600 calls from voters, though Secretary of State Steve Simon described the bulk of them as run-of-the-mill inquiries about where to drop off absentee ballots and how to track ballots online. Some called to clarify what state laws say about what could be worn at polling places.
A spokesman for Attorney General Keith Ellison said that concerns over possible voter intimidation — inflamed by pre-election reports of ex-military members guarding Minnesota precincts — did not come to pass. Instead, a stray complaint about a voter not wearing a mask at a polling place was among the top concerns brought forward to the Attorney General's Office on Tuesday.
Nor did a feared cyberattack on the election system come to pass, Simon said.
Instead, the coronavirus pandemic and a surge in mail-in voting — more than half of all votes are thought to have been cast absentee — became a top political concern.
And while the U.S. Justice Department monitored Election Day in Minneapolis as part of an 18-state operation, as of Friday no federal voting fraud or civil rights cases had been filed.
