By Phillip C. Parrish
September 6, 2026
Before the order hit the public docket Friday, the phone rang. Unknown number. About a minute. Vile names. Then the line that tells you what this fight actually is:
“Now get on board with Republicans.”
That was not a policy argument. That was a threat dressed as a team jersey. Sit down. Shut up. Play along. Or we will make you pay for the inconvenience of telling the truth.
I have not been in a red-versus-blue fight for a long time. I am a Republican because this is a constitutional republic. Full stop. The compromised club — the donor class, the PACs that are shell companies with better stationery, the consultants who fund both sides of the same grift — is not a party. It is a parasite economy that has been feeding on Minnesota’s working poor and middle class for a century. It stays in power the same way every extraction racket stays in power: keep the public uninformed, call the informed crazy, and punish anyone who will not get on board.
Get on board with whom?
The only people my team and I are on board with are the citizens of this state — the ones being lied to at industrial scale. The people screaming slurs and “or else” are not Republicans. They are the enforcement arm of a system that needs you quiet. Hate is their tool. Exploitation is their business model.
This was never only about whose name is printed on a November line. It is about whether the process that puts a name on that line can survive daylight. Paper. Lists. Configuration. Who possessed the envelopes. What file the county first sent the State, and what file they sent after they balanced to the paper reports. Anyone can stare at a dismissal and call it a loss because that is what the syndicate projects. I am here to tell you the opposite. A hate call timed to a court order over alleged service is not the sound of people who feel safe. It is the sound of people who need you to stop.
Friday’s three-judge panel dismissed 62-CV-26-5975 for lack of jurisdiction. Read that sentence twice. They did not find Todd County’s replaced results file imaginary. They did not find Blue Earth’s test-data upload imaginary. They did not find Anoka’s public statement about a modem and an uncertified configuration imaginary. They did not inspect the ballots. They said the notice was not served in the manner of a civil summons inside five days — email and certified mail to a campaign box, no third-party process server, no affidavit of an unsuccessful personal attempt. That is a procedure holding. It is not a blessing of the count.
I sat in that room. I watched them handle papers we spent weeks building. I will not pretend a judge’s eyes are a verdict. The verdict they signed is dismissed. The public-record brief and the inspection scope are still readable. The state’s own pages are still readable. An army of Minnesotans we trained can now do this work in their own counties. That is not despair. That is the republic doing what a courthouse declined to do this time.
It is not only a campaign lawyer.
Lisa Demuth and Ryan Wilson put an attorney in front of three judges to say there was no service that counted. The panel agreed the method failed the statute. That is not the same as “the notice never touched their world.” Email and a campaign box are how political operations live. Treating “not Rule 4” as “we were in the dark even to this day” is a character statement. Receipt is one fact. Statutory service is another. Collapsing them is the tell.
What if the names were reversed?
Ask it out loud. The people who run the official story already know how they would write it.
What if I had stood in that courtroom and told three judges I had never seen papers that my own inbox and my own certified-mail receipt could show I had seen — then hidden behind “it wasn’t Rule 4”? They would not call that a jurisdictional nuance. They would call me a liar on every channel they own before the lunch order came back.
What if I had signed a court paper that said the system is certified, while my own county commissioners, my own vendor sheets, and my own configuration reports said the modem takes the certified build off the certificate? They would not call that “context.” They would call me a liar and demand the file.
What if I had told a federal judge that matching a mailed ballot to a list and putting a unique barcode on the envelope was a “scheme to interfere with voting,” while my own 2020 shop was asking how somebody got “a bunch of ballots”? They would not call that litigation strategy. They would call me a liar who wants the stack and not the log.
What if I had fought the United States in United States v. Simon to keep the statewide voter file closed, then told Minnesotans the rolls were finished and clean while § 201.121 history was still being typed? They would not call that privacy. They would call me a liar with a spreadsheet.
What if I had written the vouching statute, put unregistered voters behind one oath and no ID, then sworn in a brief that identity is locked down? They would not call that access. They would call me a liar with a form.
What if I had taken a hate call telling a citizen to get on board, then gone on television to lecture that citizen about “norms”? They would not call that civic hygiene. They would call me a thug with a press list.
That is the standard they built for everyone else. I am only asking that it apply to them for one morning. I am not a jury. I do not need to be. If the word they would use on me is liar, they can sit with that word until their public page and their court page say the same thing.
The public record already does the work.
Todd County did not need my campaign to invent a problem. The Auditor-Treasurer’s own page says that during the August 11 primary, staff “inadvertently uploaded an incorrect results file which was identified when balancing final voter counts to the paper reports,” and the revised file posted at 12:17 a.m. For a window of time the state website showed the wrong totals. In Senate District 5 that file change flipped who was ahead after “100% of precincts” had already been displayed. That is the county talking, not a podcast.
Blue Earth County did not need a theory. Deputy Administrator Michael Stalberger said the first text file uploaded to the statewide system still contained the public-accuracy-test deck — about 17,000 test ballots — because they had not cleared the test data. Totals ran higher than turnout. They pulled it and re-uploaded. That is the county talking.
Anoka County Commissioner Jeff Reinert went on the record: the tabulator itself carries an EAC path; add the modem and “the entire system became uncertified.” He said roughly two-thirds of Minnesota counties run the same setup. The Secretary of State’s office answered the same reporter that “all elections equipment in Minnesota is certified” under Minn. Stat. § 206.57. Those two sentences cannot both be complete. Dakota County’s published FAQ has already said modem hardware “is not a device that needs to be certified.” ES&S’s own configuration report is the page that shows whether a modem is present. EVS 6.0.6.0 is the certified base. 6.0.7.0 is the unofficial-results package. A court paper that says “certified” without that split is a slogan standing in for a certificate.
On the rolls, the United States sued Steve Simon and the State in United States v. Simon, 25-cv-3761 (D. Minn.), to compel production of the statewide voter-registration list. Minnesota fought turning over the file the federal government said the law required. Minn. Stat. § 201.121 still gives counties weeks after a primary to finish entering Election Day registrations and voting history. You do not get to tell a court the list is sealed and finished while the tracker is still open and the raw file is in a fight.
On vouching, Minnesota law still lets one registered voter authorize unregistered voters at the polls. James O’Keefe put the training on camera. That design is the statute, not a rumor. A sworn assurance that identity is locked to a passport standard cannot live next to that oath.
On mass mail, Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office joined a multi-state coalition and won another freeze of USPS rules that would have required recipient lists and unique envelope barcodes — the boring tools of “who possessed this piece of paper.” Simon went on X Friday night and called that a “scheme to interfere with mail-in voting.” A 2020 internal SOS chat now circulating asks how someone got “a bunch of ballots.” You cannot tell a federal judge that list-matching is oppression and tell Minnesotans the mail channel is locked down. Those are opposite sentences.
The Minnesota Supreme Court already told this ticket that following the August 18 Contingent Plan is not, by itself, a § 204B.44 “wrongful act.” That order did not erase Todd’s file, Blue Earth’s test deck, or the certification split. It said the recount rule is the recount rule. Different case. Different question. The public can still read both stacks.
So when I say their court paper and their public page do not match, I mean exactly that. Perjury is a crime with elements: oath, falsity, knowledge, materiality. I am not a jury. I am a citizen with two sets of documents. Set one is what they signed for judges. Set two is what their offices and their counties published. Set two includes a replaced results file, a test deck in the live feed, a commissioner and a Secretary who do not agree whether the system as used is certified, unfinished voting history, a vouching statute, a fight over the voter file, and a lawsuit to stop tighter custody of mailed ballots. If those officials want to keep telling courts the system is sealed and certified, they can explain the second set in public. Until they do, Minnesotans are entitled to treat the contradiction as the story.
The unknown caller said get on board with Republicans. The State’s filings say get on board with the official story. Same demand. Different letterhead.
I have looked thousands of Minnesotans in the face over eighteen months. Farmers. Veterans. Church families. People who still work with their hands. They already know. They do not need a cable graphic. They can feel when the official story and the street do not match. God’s gift of discernment is not a press pass. It is the refusal to call a rigged process “settled.”
So here is my answer to the unknown caller.
I will not get on board with a club that treats citizens as inventory.
I will not get on board with a donor class that funds the same extraction on two letterheads.
I will not get on board with a demand that we stop asking whether the votes were legal.
I will not get on board with a press release that says “certified” while the configuration report says something else.
I am on board with the people of Minnesota. The call is documented. The order is public. The county statements are public. The federal voter-roll case is public. The USPS freeze is public. The work continues in the precincts.
Now get on board with the truth.
Phillip C. Parrish