By Phillip C. Parrish
Operation Shadow Hunt
October 10, 2026
There is a lawful path. It uses the tools the Minnesota Supreme Court, the Minnesota statutes, and the federal criminal code already provide. This is what can be done before November 3, and who can do it.
The structure that puts ineligible names on the roll
Minnesota did not arrive at a low-verification election system by accident. The same officials who administer it have spent years defending the rules that make citizenship hard to check and ballots easy to mail.
Secretary of State Steve Simon administers a vouching statute, Minnesota Statutes § 201.061, that lets one registered voter authorize up to eight others. The oath is residence. It is not citizenship, age, or felony status. Those ballots are not provisional. Simon has defended that rule in public and in court. He has also refused the federal SAVE database for individualized citizenship checks. His September 25, 2026 statement that Minnesota is “not permitted in state law” to use SAVE cites no statute. Refusal is a choice.
Governor Tim Walz signed and has defended the broader package: driver’s licenses available without proof of lawful presence, automatic voter registration tied to those transactions, permanent absentee lists, and expanded mail voting. The result is a pipeline. A person can obtain a state credential, be offered registration on an attestation, land on a permanent absentee list, and receive a ballot by mail. The verification that should have happened at the front end is pushed to the back end — or never happens. When federal prosecutors later charge noncitizens who voted, the defense from the same offices is that the system “caught” them. The system is what let them on the roll.
Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office has been the legal shield. When cities, counties, or citizens ask for the rows, the tapes, or the citizenship check, the response is a citation, a fee, a portal, or a claim that the file does not exist. Ellison has treated requests for voter-roll data and questions about noncitizen registration as attacks on access rather than questions about eligibility. The September 30 indictments of ten foreign nationals — including one charged with voting in the August 11 primary — arrived while his office and Simon’s were still telling the public that noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare and that federal interest in the rolls is interference.
The DFL legislative majorities wrote the statutes. Same-day registration, vouching for eight, no photo identification, permanent absentee, and mail ballots that move before Election Day are not neutral convenience measures when they are paired with a refusal to use the federal citizenship tool and a refusal to export the cast-vote record from the counties that hold the volume. The incentive is built in. Expand the pool of people who can receive a ballot. Remove the check that would keep ineligible people out. Then call any request to see the names an attempt to suppress the vote.
Mass mailings complete the circuit. Absentee applications and ballots go to addresses on a roll that includes inactive files from documented fake-registration schemes, names that have not been run against SAVE, and election-day registrations that were vouched in on residence alone. When a ballot is mailed to a name that does not belong to an eligible citizen at that address, the opportunity for identity theft is created by the mailing itself. The 2025 federal case against two people who sold hundreds of fictitious registration forms to a foundation showed the front end. The counties that will not produce the textual cast-vote record or the vouching forms are the back end. Simon’s office has not produced the change log for a 7:00 a.m. denominator that moved 2,893 names after the polls closed. That is not a clerical gap. It is the same system declining to show its work.
This is not a claim that a grand jury has indicted Simon, Walz, or Ellison for conspiracy. It is a description of what they have done in public: written or defended the rules, refused the citizenship check, withheld or slow-walked the records, and framed federal enforcement as a threat to the election. The constitutional republic runs on eligible citizens. A system that makes eligibility hard to verify and ballots easy to mail is not administering that republic. It is substituting a headcount for a citizenry. The remedy is still the one in the next section: force the rows into the open with the statutes that already exist.
What is already within the law
Cities may choose paper rosters. On September 11, 2026, in City of Oak Grove v. Steve Simon, A26-0910, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that a municipality decides whether precincts inside its limits use paper or electronic rosters. Minnesota Statutes § 201.225 does not give the county auditor a veto. Paper is the default. Electronic is a “may.” A city council can pass a determination, send it to the auditor and the Secretary, and require printed rosters for November 3. Coordination on delivery and absentee mark-off is required. Approval is not. The model notice is already published.
Cast-vote records are public data where they exist. Minnesota Statutes § 206.845 requires a textual export of the cast-vote record. Wright County produced 23,213 rows for the August 11 primary and stated its DS200 tabulators have no modems. Hennepin, Ramsey, Dakota, and Olmsted have not. The statute does not contain a ranked-choice exception that swallows the export. A Chapter 13 request, followed by a district-court action if the county claims “no data,” is the ordinary course. Inspection is free. A fee that functions as a veto can be challenged.
Serial numbers are not classified nonpublic. Minnesota Statutes § 13.37 allows a security classification only after a fact-specific determination and a short written explanation. Other counties left the serial on the zero tape and the results tape. Le Sueur redacted it without that explanation. The serial is the field that pairs a zero tape to a results tape and a deployed machine to the machine that was accuracy-tested. A follow-up request for the explanation, and for every system procured since 2019 with acceptance-test seals, is already drafted.
The 7:00 a.m. denominator is a public record. The unofficial results page is supposed to freeze “Voters Registered at 7AM.” On August 11 at 8:17 p.m. it read 3,889,572. By August 12 it had fallen to 3,886,679. The certified figure returned to 3,889,442. No change log has been produced. The September 25 request asked for the log or a writing under § 13.03 that none exists. Fourteen days have run. Silence is an exhibit. A second request, or a complaint to the Data Practices Office, is available.
Noncitizen voting is already a federal crime. On September 30, 2026, a federal grand jury indicted ten foreign nationals for voting or registering in the 2022 general, the 2024 general, and the August 11, 2026 primary. One defendant is charged with voting in that primary. Attorney General Todd Blanche and U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen have said more investigations are open. The ordinary course is working. Additional names, dates of birth, and precincts can be referred to the same office.
SAVE is available for individualized checks. The U.S. Supreme Court stayed the injunction that blocked expanded use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database. Systematic purges inside 90 days of a federal election remain barred. Individualized checks are not. Secretary Simon’s September 25 statement that Minnesota is “not permitted in state law” to use SAVE cites no statute. A city, a county, or a member of Congress can ask the Secretary, in writing, for a yes or a no on three named matches and on the inactive fake-absentee file. A written refusal is a record.
Vouching is limited by its own text. Minnesota Statutes § 201.061 allows one registered voter to vouch for up to eight others. The oath is residence, not citizenship. The forms (P2 and P3) and the instruments that appointed the absentee ballot boards under § 203B.121 are public data unless a specific exemption is cited. Requests for those forms, starting with high election-day-registration precincts, are pending. Production or a cited denial is the next step.
What can be accomplished this month
- City councils. Place the Oak Grove determination on the next agenda. Send the notice. Ask the auditor, in the same letter, for the procedure that will mark absentee and early voters on the paper roster. October 16 begins the early-voting tabulator phase. Paper rosters do not open that machine. Both notices can go out together.
- County auditors and data-practices contacts. File or renew the Chapter 13 requests for zero tapes, results tapes, serial numbers, modem status, incident logs, P2/P3 vouching forms, absentee-board appointments, and public-accuracy-test records. Cite § 13.37 if a serial is redacted and demand the short description. Cap copy costs at $50 and require an estimate first.
- Secretary of State. A separate Chapter 13 request for the certification file on EVS 6.5.1.1, the February 23, 2026 modem carve-out, acceptance-test records held by the Office, and the 7:00 a.m. change log. The October 20 town hall is a public recording. Two questions belong on it: where is the change log, and will the Office run individualized SAVE checks or decline in writing.
- U.S. Attorney and FBI Minneapolis. Refer the three name matches, with the birth-year discrepancy on Tou Lue Vang stated in the open, and any additional inactive files tied to the 2025 fake-absentee applications. The September 30 indictments show the office is already charging false claims of citizenship. Additional referrals do not require a new statute.
- Election judges, observers, and county staff. Document what is seen. A zero tape signed at night, a serial number blacked out, a modem light, a vouching form accepted without the required fields — write it down, date it, and keep a copy. Those notes become exhibits in a Chapter 13 action or a referral. They do not require a protest name on a ballot.
- Citizens. Do not pour a write-in into a process that still cannot show the row. Ask your city for paper. Ask your auditor for the tape. Ask your member of Congress to ask the Secretary the SAVE question on the record. Inspection of public data is free. The window for paper rosters is measured in days, not months.
The ask
Produce the rows the statute already requires. Confirm or kill the three name matches on date of birth. Put paper rosters on city agendas. Ask the SAVE question on October 20 and keep the recording. Refer additional noncitizen matches to the office that just indicted ten. None of this needs a new law. All of it can be done by people who already hold a pen, a council seat, or a data-practices portal login.
The Court put the roster back in city hands. The grand jury put ten noncitizen cases on a docket. The statute put the cast-vote record in the public file. The rest is execution.
Phillip C. Parrish
Operation Shadow Hunt
phillip@parrish4mn.com
parrish4mn.com
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What If the People Who Wrote the Rules…
U.S. Attorney, September 30, 2026