A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Rice County’s elections administrator. The lawsuit started as a dispute over public records and grew into a challenge over use of internet modems in voting machines in the county and across the state.
A man slides his completed ballot into the scanner on General Election Day in Faribault. (File photo/southernminn.com)
Judge Carol Hanks ruled this week that the lawsuit was filed against the wrong county official, and she does not have jurisdiction in the broader challenge.
“We are pleased that the court recognized that this lawsuit was completely misguided,” Anne Goering, the attorney representing Rice County in the case, told the Daily News. “It is unfortunate that a great deal of time and public money was spent defending against this frivolous case.”
The lawsuit was filed in August by Kathleen Hagen, who is a Lonsdale resident and a former election judge, and Matt Benda, an attorney from Albert Lea who was a Republican candidate for Congress.
The lawsuit named Denise Anderson, Rice County’s elections director, as the defendant.
Hanks’ ruling issued Tuesday said Anderson cannot be legally liable in the public records claim. Hanks ruled the lawsuit was not valid, because it should have instead been filed against the county administrator.
The suit claimed the county failed to provide all documents requested by Hagen and Benda. Goering countered that the plaintiffs were unwilling to accept the county’s response that the requested documents did not exist.
Under state public records law, the county administrator is the ultimate “responsible authority” for records requests. While Anderson responded to county records requests, she was only the “designee” and not the “responsible authority,” Hanks ruled.
In response to a Daily News invitation to comment, Benda gave this response to the judge’s decision:
“Questioning government institutions is never an easy or popular path,” he said. “In this circumstance, the court has required that we pursue additional avenues to obtain transparency. We intend to continue to pursue these matters with diligence and persistence.”
Benda said he’s still deciding whether to appeal the ruling.
The judge also listed two reasons for dismissing Benda’s added broader challenge to the use of internet modems to transmit results after polls have closed.
Chiefly, Hanks found that district court judges do not have jurisdiction over “broad-ranging challenges to the election process.”
Hanks also ruled that state law required the plaintiffs to notify every candidate on the General Election ballot of the lawsuit, and they did not do so.
Even with the dismissal, Benda said the lawsuit “accomplished some” of his and Hagen’s “transparency goals.”
“We obtained an initial glimpse behind the curtain of secrecy to confirm that modems are actively being used in Rice County elections and that they are not certified or tested at the state level,” Benda said.
The Secretary of State became an intervenor in the lawsuit and refuted the latter claim.
“The foundational theory of the petition is factually wrong,” Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hartshorn wrote in a legal filing. “Every hardware and software product that Rice County is using in the 2022 general election has been properly tested and certified.”
