The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party has nullified the results of the Minneapolis DFL’s July 19 endorsement convention after the party’s Constitution, Bylaws and Rules Committee (CBRC) found “substantial failures” in the convention’s voting process.
It means, among other things, the state party has revoked the local party’s endorsement of mayoral candidate Omar Fateh, a member of the Democrat Socialists of America (DSA). The convention’s voting delegates had five candidates to choose from, including incumbent mayor Jacob Frey, who came in second. Frey was mayor in 2020 during the immensely destructive George Floyd riots.
In Minnesota, the DFL holds local endorsement conventions where candidates give speeches and party members choose top candidates to go on to the primary. The party shares its voter rolls with the top candidate and offers support. It is very difficult for a Democrat to win the primary or general election without the DFL endorsement, and because Minneapolis is largely Democrat, the endorsement winner usually wins the race.
This year the convention aimed to endorse candidates for Minneapolis mayor and park board districts.
Disastrous Convention
After the convention, which was held at the Minneapolis Target Center, the state DFL received challenges to the results alleging numerous rule violations. Frey was one of the challengers. The state DFL held a challenge hearing August 17 to investigate what happened at the convention and produced a seven-page report of its findings.
The investigation found the master check-in sheet delegates sign at registration was not secured, offering the opportunity to change ID numbers used in the voting process.
The mayoral race had an undercount of 176 votes, and one of the candidates was improperly dropped from the ballot on the second round of voting, the report said. In the first round of voting, 578 total votes were counted at the convention, but after the convention, the votes were reconciled and the DFL found 754 ballots were actually cast.
A digital credentials spreadsheet used to count the votes was not secured and it was used by people outside the credentials committee, including the campaigns.
A spreadsheet built by a DFL Head Teller Amy Livingston was used to tabulate the votes, but, the report said the spreadsheet had many broken formulas. After the first round of votes for the Minneapolis mayoral race, the spreadsheet was not working properly. Other volunteers tried to help fix it, but at some point Livingston got a migraine headache and left. The size of the spreadsheet and the speed of the computer hampered efforts to calculate results, and even though someone eventually transferred the data to a faster computer, it took hours to get the results on the first vote.
The CBRC “has determined, based on very clear and convincing evidence, that the electronic voting system utilized by the Minneapolis DFL was substantially flawed,” the report said.
When a delegate noted that there were far fewer votes than delegates present and asked to redo the first vote, no one seconded the motion to redo the vote. Later, someone made a motion to suspend the rules and vote by, ”show of badges.” The motion was seconded, so they changed the way they voted in the middle of the convention.
“The CBRC determines that the challengers have proven by clear and convincing evidence that the endorsement of Omar Fateh for mayor of Minneapolis was facilitated by the use of a flawed electronic voting system, which caused substantial undercount on the first ballot of the mayoral endorsement, and which caused another candidate to be dropped from consideration after the first such ballot,” the report reads. “The CBRC determines that the challengers have proven, by clear and convincing evidence that the first ballot of the mayoral endorsement must be disregarded in its entirety by reason of fact that it did not count all the eligible voting delegates. The CBRC determines that the challengers have proven, by clear and convincing evidence, that the second ballot of the mayoral endorsement must be disregarded in its entirety by reason of the fact that it did not include the name of the eligible candidate.”
Minneapolis DFL Gets Probation
The Minneapolis convention was such a disaster that the state DFL not only revoked the endorsement of Omar Fateh, it has instructed the Minneapolis DFL to allow all five mayoral candidates access to the voter rolls. The state party also determined the following remedies:
The Minneapolis DFL is barred from conducting another 2025 mayoral endorsing convention.
The Minneapolis DFL is barred from endorsing a candidate for mayor in 2025 through its central committee or its executive committee, or otherwise.
The Minneapolis DFL is placed on probation for two years, under the supervision of the DFL State Executive Committee. Minneapolis DFL must submit a plan for compliance with the directives of the DFL state executive committee. Minneapolis DFL must show “that it is capable of acting in accordance with the standard DFL principles and practices.”
The CBRC also recommends that the state DFL determine that any use of electronic voting system by any DFL unit should require prior review and approval by the state party.