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I'm just waiting to see where Minnesota''s place in line is. We didn't push our way to the front. But we surely aren't going to take the last slice either.

Minor irony: The photo illustrating this article is from a stand-alone municipal election, held in an odd year. For which all parties to the court case agree the city can choose whether to use electronic rosters or paper. Only the county/state/federal elections are at issue.

This article does a decent job of summarizing the policy issues at stake but really doesn't even touch the legal question the court will be answering. www.startribune.com/minnesota-su...

Minnesota Supreme Court weighs return to paper voter rostersThe city of Oak Grove wants the court to bar Anoka County from forcing it to use electronic voter rolls.www.startribune.com

Not me. I'm going to take a whole bunch of files with names like 2026-07-01-whatever and 2026-07-31-something-else and drag them all into a new folder named 2026-07 and start over again fresh.

Because @mprnews.org continues to distribute outdated information about Minnesota's absentee ballot witness requirement, I want to restate the actual requirement. As always, the best advice is to follow the official instructions. The witness can be any U.S. citizen who will be 18 by election day.

This graph also is a reminder of how vastly different the populations of Minnesota counties are. The X way far away from the others in the upper right is Hennepin. The next two are Ramsey and Dakota. About 10 more are individually visible. That leaves 74 bunched into the fuzzy caterpillar near zero.

The 87 Minnesota counties are showing a reasonably consistent return and acceptance of about 26% of mailed-out ballots, with a week and a half to go. (Estimated assuming mailout equals applications minus accepted in-person.) www.sos.mn.gov/election-adm...

I don't see how @nytimes.com can frame this as a threat rather than a concession. Yes, Trump is "dealing a blow" to a nomination, but it's his own nomination.

The @startribune.com headline writer has utterly misrepresented @walkerorenstein.bsky.social's article. Only Tafoya is tip-toeing around denialism. White is stomping into the middle of it waving a STOLEN ELECTION banner. Schwarze is trying to signal a move from tip-toeing to plunging in.

Minnesota GOP Senate hopefuls tip-toe around Trump’s election denial claimsMichele Tafoya, Adam Schwarze and Royce White all say it’s a priority to pass Trump’s election security bill, which critics say will exclude eligible voters. But the candidates differ on denialism tow...www.startribune.com

The sum of a whole bunch of individual decisions happens to end with 000. The probability of that happening is just 1 in 1000. The same as the probability of a total ending in 317 or any other three digits. There's nothing more weird about one than another.

Be wary of comparisons between different Minnesota counties' early voting numbers. Factors such as the convenience of voting locations can substantially affect the number of early voters. Turnout for the full election may be in quite different proportions.

With a Minnesota election nearing, a reminder that every absentee ballot you receive in the mail has a phone number and email address in the return address. Wondering why you got two? The elections office is more likely to know than social media folks. What to do about that coffee spill? Ditto.

Perfect illustration of Box's aphorism that all models are wrong, but some are useful. One doesn't need data to see this model must be wrong: It calls for a single instantaneous change in behavior on what, the 18th birthday? And yet, and yet, it captures, however imperfectly, an aspect of reality.

Well, that's interesting. NPR created a special ratings tier just for us Minnesotans. www.npr.org/2026/07/27/n...

Minnesota absentee voters: There's only a deadline for returning your ballot, not for requesting one. But if you do the math, I'd say today is a great day to get that application in, if you haven't yet. www.sos.mn.gov/elections-vo...

"He has discovered limits on his power that he could have scarcely imagined ...." (Any normal president wouldn't have relied on his imagination. He would have been briefed.) Sobering analysis.

I'm sure all the campaign professionals figured this out before me, but if you want to know which Minnesotans have already voted, you've now got two lists to buy instead of one.

My advice to anxious voters has been: Just vote. However you vote. If you vote by mail, just vote by mail. This latest news is further reinforcement for that advice.

Minneapolis shows a substantial increase in in-person voting with the turn from envelope-based voting to voters inserting their ballots into the scanner: 259 in-person voters yesterday at 980 E. Hennepin vs. 156 the highest previous day. That's a 66% increase. vote.minneapolismn.gov/results-data...