By Phillip C. Parrish
Operation Shadow Hunt
October 5, 2026
This is the briefing that brings a new reader current. If you have followed the August and September reports, it is the update. If you have not, it is the map. The primary is over. The printed line for November is set. The roll that will be used on November 3 is the same roll that moved after the August polls closed. What follows is what is known, what is still hidden, and what a city, a clerk, or a neighbor can do before Election Day.
One man sits on top of that system. Steve Simon is the Secretary of State. He lost the roster fight. He refused the citizenship tool. He has not produced the change log. He has let the largest county say a file does not exist that a smaller county already emailed. Those are not vibes. They are his statements, his court loss, and his office’s pages.
Start here if you are new
Read these in order if you want the trail. Each one is a public record, not a rumor.
The vouching door. A registered voter can authorize up to eight unregistered voters without identification. The oath is residence, not citizenship. That is the statute Simon defends.
The statutes as the shield. Simon and Attorney General Keith Ellison have used those statutes to answer questions about verification with a lecture about access.
The pathway is documented. Training, county data, and the vouching rule on one page.
Where the August volume sat. The Republican gubernatorial primary, and why a limited look would miss the structure.
Lock the envelopes. Absentee envelopes are evidence. The shred clock is real.
The paper is still there. What survived after the contest was narrowed.
Why the state never sits in the other chair. Chapter 209 is built as a fight between candidates so the Office can leave the room.
They pulled the microphone. The count still has to stand up on paper, lists, and configuration.
A count that cannot be checked. Then the missing files were called “no data.”
Three counties produced the file. Counties of similar duty gave opposite answers.
Stearns produced the count and the log. The zero tape was signed at night.
The ratio the counties that add do not have. If the producing counties are the true ratio, the statewide DFL pile does not match the ground.
The statutes already say produce the rows. The September 25 request. Fourteen days.
You are not crazy. When the parking lot does not match the banner, trust your eyes.
Cities, not vendors. The September 11 win. Read it before you read the rest of this page.
What is known
The city owns the roster. On September 11, in City of Oak Grove v. Steve Simon, A26-0910, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that a city decides whether precincts inside its limits use paper or electronic rosters. Simon and Anoka County argued the county auditor controls that choice whenever a state, federal, or county race is on the ballot. The Court called that reading unreasonable. Minnesota Statutes section 201.225 does not limit a city’s role to municipal-only elections. Paper is the default. Electronic is a “may.” A county delivers printed rosters and marks absentee voters onto them. A county does not veto. Simon chose the fight. He lost it.
The 7:00 a.m. freeze moved. The unofficial results page is supposed to hold “Voters Registered at 7AM” so turnout has a denominator. On August 11, 2026, at 8:17 p.m., that banner read 3,889,572. By August 12 it had fallen to 3,886,679. That is 2,893 names, while precincts were marked complete. The certified figure came back to 3,889,442. No change log has been published. The September 25 request asked for the log or a writing under section 13.03 that none exists. Fourteen days have run. Silence is now part of the record.
The cast-vote file exists. Wright County produced 23,213 textual rows for the August 11 primary and said its DS200 tabulators do not have modems installed. Hennepin County holds about 38 percent of every election-day registration in the state. A requester there was told a cast-vote record is only produced for ranked-choice voting, a contest the county did not run. Same certified system. Opposite answer. The file exists where the pile is small. The file is declared absent where the pile decides the story. Section 206.845 does not contain a ranked-choice exception that swallows the textual export.
The modem was carved out, then treated as a secret. The Secretary’s February 23, 2026 certificate for EVS 6.5.1.1 states that the certification does not extend to modems. A county that answers “no modem” in writing is doing the public a service. A county that withholds modem status is not. Le Sueur County produced tapes and blacked out the tabulator serial numbers, citing section 13.37. That section does not list serial numbers as nonpublic. It requires a short, fact-specific explanation. Other counties left the serial on the page. The serial is the only field that pairs a zero tape to a results tape and a deployed machine to the machine that was accuracy-tested. Anoka County did not refuse the same request. It routed it to a portal. Routing is not production.
The citizenship tool was unblocked. Simon refused it. On September 25 the U.S. Supreme Court let states use the expanded SAVE database for citizenship checks. Use is voluntary. Systematic purges inside 90 days of a federal election stay barred. Individual checks are what the order left open. Simon’s statement, on his own site, cites no statute:
I want to be very clear – this ruling has no effect on Minnesota elections. Minnesota has never used the SAVE Program for voter verification, we’re not permitted in state law to do so, and we have no plans to do so.
He added that even if it were lawful, the program is flawed. In congressional testimony he has said it is “not yet ready” and would need a statutory change. “Not permitted” without a section number is a press line. It is not a law. He also confirmed, under questioning, that vouching certifies residency, not citizenship, age, or felony status, and that those ballots are not provisional. That is his system. He is now refusing the one federal check that asks the citizenship question his own rule does not ask.
Three names are a question, not a verdict. A volunteer list of 610 names from the ICE “Worst of the Worst” site, with no dates of birth on the source sheet, was run against a Minnesota voting-history extract. Three records came back on name alone. A Tou Lue Vang record in Washington County, Hugo, birth year 1985 on the roll, with general-election credits from 2004 through 2024. A man of that name was pardoned on June 10, 2026, and deported in July. Published accounts of that case put his birth in 1983. Two years is enough to be a different person. An Anthony Foka Nimpson record in Wright County, Monticello, birth year 1948. A Thai Van Dinh record in Hennepin County, Bloomington, with a credit on the August 11 primary. That last match is the weakest. The name is common. None of these rows is a finding that a noncitizen voted. They are the individualized checks Simon says he will not run.
Early voting is already open on that roll. Absentee and early voting for November 3 began September 18. A Secretary of State mailer in the first week said more than 12,000 early ballots had been accepted, and that nothing had changed about vote by mail. On October 16 the state shifts to a second early-voting phase in which a voter can mark a ballot and insert it into a tabulator. That is a change in how a ballot is captured. His mailer did not lead with it. October 20, 7 to 8 p.m., he sits with Jennifer Morrell of The Elections Group for a public town hall. That recording is the place to ask for the change log and for a written yes or no on SAVE.
Where Simon is wrong, and where he is blocking
He told Oak Grove the county owns the roster. The Supreme Court told him the statute does not say that. He did not concede the reading. He had to be ordered.
He told the state the SAVE ruling has no effect and that Minnesota law forbids the check. He cited no statute. The federal order does not require an upload. It removes his excuse that no tool exists. Refusal is now a choice, made in an election cycle, about a roll he will not let anyone else test.
He presides over a results page whose frozen denominator moved 2,893 names overnight. He has not produced the log. A freeze that thaws is not a clerical shrug. It is the official page admitting the roll is not a settled object.
He certifies a system, then accepts a metro answer that the cast-vote record does not exist, while a county on the same system produces 23,213 rows. If the file is “no data” in Hennepin and a spreadsheet in Wright, the difference is not the machine. The difference is the willingness to export.
He carved modems out of the February 23 certificate, then left counties free to treat modem status and serial numbers as security secrets. Section 13.37 is not a blanket. A serial number other counties have already published is not a state secret in Le Sueur unless someone explains why.
He has described voter data as too private to inspect, while his own training allows one registered voter to vouch eight others in with no identification. Privacy is the word he uses when the request is for a row. It is not the word he uses at the polling place.
None of that is a criminal charge. Intent is for a prosecutor. Duty is already on the page. A Secretary who loses the roster case, refuses the citizenship check, withholds the change log, and tolerates a missing cast-vote file in the county that holds 38 percent of election-day registration is not administering a transparent election. He is administering a story.
What is still unknown
The 7:00 a.m. change log, or a writing that none exists.
Textual cast-vote records from Hennepin, Ramsey, Dakota, and Olmsted.
The names on the absentee ballot boards under section 203B.121, and the P2 and P3 vouching forms from the high election-day-registration precincts.
Whether any DS200 used a modem after the February 23 certificate. Wright said no. Most counties have not answered in writing.
Why Le Sueur’s serial numbers are security information when other counties’ serial numbers are not.
Whether the three name matches are the same people as the ICE cards. Date of birth will settle it. SAVE would settle it faster. Simon has declined the tool.
The disposition of the inactive files tied to the hundreds of fake absentee applications already in the 2025 hearing record. Inactive is not deleted.
How many of the 12,000-plus early ballots his office announced were accepted against a roll that moved after August 11.
What you can do before November 3
1. Put paper on a council agenda this week. The determination is the city’s. Copy this and send it to the auditor and the Secretary:
Pursuant to Minnesota Statutes section 201.225, subdivision 1, and the Minnesota Supreme Court’s order in City of Oak Grove v. Steve Simon, et al., A26-0910, the City of [name] has determined that paper voter rosters, not electronic rosters, will be used at precincts within the city’s boundaries for the November 3, 2026 general election. Please confirm delivery of printed precinct rosters and the procedure for recording absentee and early voters on those rosters. This notice is a determination under the statute and the order, not a request for approval.
2. Ask your auditor for the zero tape, the results tape, and the serial number on both. If the serial is blacked out, ask for the section 13.37 short description. Inspection of public data is free under section 13.03.
3. Ask, in writing, whether any tabulator used on August 11 or in the current early-voting window had a modem. The certificate already carved modems out.
4. On October 20, ask Simon two questions on the recording. Where is the 7:00 a.m. change log? Will the Office run individualized SAVE checks on the three name matches and on the inactive fake-absentee file, or decline in writing?
5. Do not pour a protest name into a process that still cannot show the row. A write-in does not repair a missing log, a missing cast-vote file, or a vouching statute. Discernment is yours. The work that still has a floor is the roster, the tape, and the question he does not want asked in public.
You are not crazy when the parking lot does not match the banner. The Court just told your city it can put the roll back on paper. The Secretary just told the state he will not use the citizenship tool the other Court unblocked, and he still has not produced the log for a freeze that moved. Those are the facts. One of them you can act on tonight.
God sees the work. Christ is King.
Phillip C. Parrish
Operation Shadow Hunt
phillip@parrish4mn.com
parrish4mn.com