Last night, a loyal reader of this blog forwarded a Mark Ritchie fundraising email in which Ritchie whines about how unfairly conservatives are treating him. Here’s a copy of Ritchie’s email:

Dear Friend,

Over the last 3 years, I have worked hard to keep partisan politics out of the Office of the Secretary of State, the way so many of my predecessors have done.

The 2008 recount, the largest in our nation’s history, has been acclaimed across the state and the nation as a model of how to handle a very close and very emotional election in a fair and transparent manner.

Unfortunately not everyone likes this non-partisan approach. Starting last July the Minnesota GOP has been attacking me in radio ads, press conferences and through affiliated organizations. Last week they launched a new round of negative attacks, hoping to convince Minnesotans that the recount process was somehow flawed-despite the unanimous decision of 12 Supreme Court Justices and district court judges.

While I have learned to ignore personal attacks, it is important to get the facts out to the public. To do this I need your help.

Will you support my campaign to keep partisan politics out of the administration of Minnesota’s elections by making a $100, $50, or $25 donation?

I thank you for your continued support of elections that are fair, efficient, and free of fraud or manipulation.

Sincerely,

With all due respect to DFL SecState Ritchie, the acclaim he’s talking about regarding the recount process is rather one-sided and related mostly to the counting of ballots cast on Election Day. That acclaim certainly didn’t extend to counting absentee ballots.

I wrote here about KSTP’s investigation into multiple irregularities in accepting or rejecting absentee ballots that shouldn’t have gotten counted. When KSTP’s reporter showed DFL SecState Ritchie ballots that didn’t have any signatures on them, DFLer Ritchie said that if he was going to show him physical ballots, the reporter should’ve told him to bring his glasses.

If Mr. Ritchie needs glasses to detect that these ballots weren’t signed, then he’s ill-prepared for fulfilling his responsibilities as Minnesota’s chief election officer.

The thing that Mr. Ritchie isn’t telling people is the incompetence displayed in posting the various school bonding and levy votes in 2007. The SecState’s website didn’t accurately reflect the vote totals in a number of school districts until a week after the election, long after local newspapers wrote articles about whether bonding or levy issues had passed or failed.

Now DFLer Ritchie is suggesting that we’re supposed to forget about the incompetence his staff showed in posting the school district elections AND the mishandling of counting absentee ballots in the Coleman-Franken recount. NO THANKS.

DFL SecState Ritchie says that he’s kept partisan politics out of the SecState’s office. How does he explain his partisan attack on blogger Michael Brodkorb during an interview with Air America? Here’s a portion of what Ritchie said in his interview:

“…some employee of the Republican Party, Michael Brodkorb, in particular, um…you know are constantly, almost on a daily basis, um, you know, looking for things to attack any Democrat on the street about.” Source: Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, Minnesota Matters, Air America, February 26, 2007

I’d be willing to cut Ritchie some slack if he knew what he was talking about. At the time, Michael wasn’t an employee of the Republican Party, though he certainly had numerous connections to people inside the Republican Party. (For the record, those of us who know him would be a little surprised if Michael doesn’t know everyone on Minnesota’s political landscape but that’s another post for another day.) It’s certainly accurate to say that Michael highlighted things where Ritchie made mistakes or didn’t live up to his constitutional responsibilities.

If Ritchie is whining about getting criticized for mistakes he’s made, then there’s a simple solution: he should stop making mistakes that give ammunition to his opponents.

I’d further suggest that the District Court judges didn’t do their jobs if they overlooked absentee ballots that weren’t filled out properly. There’s no reason for those absentee ballots to get counted. PERIOD!!! END OF SENTENCE!!! The judges that failed to rule those ballots out failed Minnesota voters. For Ritchie to suggest that everything is right because some judges failed Minnesota voters is testament to how desperately he needs their political cover.

The only benchmark that matters is whether all of the absentee ballots were correctly accepted or rejected and whether the accepted ballots were counted accurately. In his attempt to obfuscate, Ritchie tries distracting us from that central thing upon which he should be judged.

That might work with the Fringe Media who are easily distracted by ’shiny object’ arguments but it doesn’t work with bloggers who are paying attention. The benchmark on which Ritchie will be graded is whether his election judges followed clearly written Minnesota election laws in accepting or rejecting absentee ballots in the Coleman-Franken recount and the other recounts.

If Mr. Ritchie failed to ensure that, then he’s a failure who needs to be ‘fired’ from his job. No amount of whining on Mr. Ritchie’s behalf will change that.

Technorati: Recounts, Elections, Absentee Ballots, Election Judges, Election Laws, Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, Al Franken, DFL