Is the Brad Tabke-Aaron Paul race heading for a new election?

Despite a Fox9 reporter's statement to the contrary, the race for House District-54A is anything except over. That's because Scott County officials can't prove what happened to 21 potentially missing ballots. According to Fox9's reporting, "The mystery over 21 missing ballots in Minnesota House District 54A appears to be the result of human error, according to the Scott County Attorney's Office."

"Appears to be?" I've heard weasel words from attorneys before but that's the worst I've ever heard. "Appears to be" doesn't meet the threshold of proof. Without proof of chain of custody, it's just SWAG, aka Statistical Wild Ass Guess. That's as sturdy as hearsay evidence, In a real court, which is where this is going, hearsay evidence isn't admissible.

Scott County Attorney Ron Hocevar said "The preliminary investigation into the 21-ballot discrepancy hasn’t been determinative thus far, and it appears likely to be the result of human error that occurred during the collection of early absentee ballots at the City of Shakopee. This unfortunate situation resulted in a level of confusion that should not have occurred." This "unfortunate situation" has happened with DFL Rep. Tabke leading GOP Candidate Aaron Paul by 15 votes.

Hocevar continued:

In the interest of full transparency, we have included a link to the information provided to the attorneys for both candidates this morning. It’s important to note that the investigation is ongoing and we hope that more information will be forthcoming.
Lezlie Vermillion, the Scott County Administrator, isn't certain what happened to those missing ballots:

Again, there's no mention that Scott County can prove chain of custody for those missing ballots. At this point, Scott County can't prove that these ballots are missing. Until Scott County can prove what happened to those ballots, if they even exist, Scott County shouldn't certify the results of the race. This doesn't make sense:
On Wednesday, the Scott County Attorney's Office released its preliminary investigation report about the 21 missing ballots in Shakopee, finding "Scott County has come to the conclusion that the ballots were likely disposed of while they were in their secrecy envelopes, after being removed from their signature envelopes but before being tabulated."

The issue with the missing ballots was discovered during an audit on Nov. 7, with county staff finding 20 ballot records for Precinct 10 and one for Precinct 12A. It's not uncommon for one voter to check in and not vote, so the discrepancy in Precinct 12A was not pursued and the focus was on Precinct 10, the report says.

These are mail-in ballots, which require a signature from another registered voter attesting to the fact that the witness witnessed the filling out of the ballot. Voting early in-person doesn't require 2 envelopes.

If Scott County can't verify what happened to these missing ballots, the investigation should be stopped immediately and a new election be held. Further, only those people who voted in this election should be allowed to vote in the new election.

Minnesota's election system once was the gold standard for the nation. Now, we're the nation's laughingstock, along with Arizona and California. California is still counting their ballots 3+ weeks after the election. If this isn't justification for overhauling our election system, then it's obvious that the DFL isn't interested in election integrity.

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