With stories about rampant fraud in Minnesota state programs dominating the national news cycle, can Minnesotans trust that such fraud does not extend to the ballot box?
A 2024 poll from the Center for the American Experiment said that 23% of Minnesotans are not confident in the integrity of Minnesota’s elections, and 46% of Minnesotans are concerned about fraud in state elections.
Republican State Sen. Steve Drazkowski has been a vocal advocate for election integrity for years. He highlighted Liban Mohamed, a man who became the subject of a Project Veritas investigation in 2020.
“Minnesota Democrats covered up the 2020 voter fraud in Minneapolis where Liban Mohamed created a video of himself on his Snapchat account, making a self-incriminating confession that he had illegally harvested 300 absentee ballots,” Drazkowski told Alpha News.
The Republican senator went on to explain that he obtained the video from a member of the Somali community and shared it with the FBI. However, Drazkowski said the federal agency “refuse[d] to act” and he shared the video with Project Veritas.
“Today, Liban Mohamed’s brother, Jamal Osman, whose name was selected on all 300 ballots, remains a member of the Minneapolis City Council,” said Drazkowski.
The longtime state legislator told Alpha News that “Until our state deals with known massive voter fraud like this, Minnesota will remain an epicenter for voter fraud.”
Voter fraud in Minnesota — real, attempted, and alleged
Earlier this year, two individuals pleaded guilty after being slapped with federal charges which accused them of participating in a scheme that involved filling out Minnesota voter registration forms with fraudulent names and identities.
Those forms, which were sent to a group the federal government only identified as “Foundation 1,” were forwarded to local election offices. However, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said the applications were flagged and “no ineligible votes were cast.”
In 2022, DFL State Sen. Omar Fateh faced scrutiny related to his 2020 campaign for state Senate. In that episode, Omar’s brother-in-law and campaign volunteer, Muse Mohamed, was convicted of lying to a federal grand jury about handling absentee ballots.
Fateh himself was not charged, but the controversy led to a Minnesota Senate ethics complaint that was later dismissed. In 2025, Fateh returned campaign donations from Feeding Our Future defendants. Other Minnesota politicians received donations as well.
In 2019, Abdihakim Essa was charged with 13 counts of falsely signing absentee ballots as a witness in Minneapolis. According to the criminal complaint, Essa signed absentee ballots using his name and his father’s name. The charges said Essa was a non-citizen, ineligible to vote, and not authorized to sign the absentee ballots as a witness.
At the time, Essa reportedly told a suspicious local elections worker that he was working for a political campaign. However, the criminal complaint did not specify which campaign.
He was eventually convicted on four of the 13 counts and sentenced to 180 days in the Hennepin County Workhouse. However, that sentence was stayed and Essa was placed on probation for two years.
In 2017, then-Minneapolis City Council candidate Mohamud Noor said that 100 people voted in Ward 6’s city council election when they were ineligible to do so.
Noor’s opponent, then-City Council Member Abdi Warsame, denounced Noor and said that believing Noor meant believing “that voters in a primarily East African Ward committed fraud and are guilty of felony crimes.”
Of course, the state government programs fraud dominating national news coverage has been carried out primarily by people of Somali and East African descent.
While news of that fraud has become well-known throughout the country, stories about voter fraud in Minnesota — real, attempted, and alleged — have gone largely unnoticed amidst Minnesota’s new national spotlight.
Minnesota has lost ballots and left ballots exposed
Two other episodes from 2024, though not evidence of voter fraud, have given Minnesotans reason to be concerned about election integrity.
In November of 2024, Scott County officials admitted that 20 ballots were likely thrown away in a race for a Minnesota House of Representatives seat that was decided by just 14 votes. The winner of that race would ultimately decide which party won the state House.
However, the voters who cast the lost ballots were later identified and at least six of them testified that they voted for the DFL candidate; putting the race out of reach for the GOP candidate. The DFL candidate, State Rep. Brad Tabke, was eventually seated.
In October of 2024, a van full of ballots was left exposed and unattended in the parking lot of Edina City Hall. A passerby snapped a photo of the van which had its trunk open with boxes of ballots on full display in the back of the vehicle.
Secretary Simon said the episode was “totally unacceptable” and “[Hennepin County] has taken appropriate, swift, and transparent action to determine that no ballots were compromised and to ensure this will not happen again.”
The courier who left the ballots unattended was later fired.
Simon, a Democrat, recently announced he will be seeking a fourth term as Minnesota secretary of state.
