Introduction: Show Your Work
“Show your work,” the reviewer said. I’d made all kinds of strategy claims for about a game called, Diplomacy, and published a book in the early 2000s. Paraphrasing Diplomacy’s rulebook: If you can break any rule in this rulebook and get away with it, go right ahead. It is an irony, to me, that gathering around the table as a teenager to tell (and see through) lies of my allies and opponents might somehow have prepared me in part for the most difficult work, so far, of my life.
Minnesota’s election system cannot show its work. In fact, where it has, it has proven the system is not fit for purpose, and therefore must be reworked. Those who don’t want you thinking about this ask questions like, Where’s the proof? But that is merely evading the principles of the matter, as detailed in this book.
Every Voter Wins ONLY once Minnesota’s election system can show its work. Until then, we live in an Every Voter Loses society. It is naive to recognize numerous cases of fraud throughout Minnesota’s government while also believing Minnesota’s election system, with some quirks, otherwise runs smoothly and is fit for purpose.
FOR A LONG TIME I HESITATED TO SYNTHESIZE THE RULES< THE VIOLATIONS< AND COMBINE INTO A FORWARD-LOOKING SOLUTION-FOCUSED WORK… BUT NOW I SEE IT IS A CONTRIBUTION I CAN MAKE TO THE PEOPLE HERE IN MINNESOTA< SO I WILL SERVE THAT PURPOSE, I CHOOSE TO
CONSIDER ABOVE EDITS
“Show your work,” said the reviewer. He was commenting on a guide I’d written in the early 2000s about a game called, Diplomacy. From the rulebook: “Diplomacy is a game of negotiations, alliances, promises kept, and promises broken.” It is an irony, to me, that gathering around the table as a teenager to tell (and see through) lies of my allies and opponents might somehow have prepared me in part for the most difficult work, so far, of my life: seeing through the deception of our election system. It can hardly be called a legitimate system. This work will provide an introduction into how.
That humans are capable of lying is in itself interesting. Since the earliest election campaigns, one can imagine lies were told. We now live in a world where the administrators of elections have repeatedly lied about the elections they have run and the results that were produced. They have gone further, denying citizen auditors the very data that would in aggregate demonstrate the many flaws (design features from the standpoint of a bad actor) inherent to the system. Once the pattern is recognized, one sees it everywhere. And almost every day something new is learned about the details of how elections have been manipulated.
I didn’t like the comment on my book and even became defensive about what I’d written; years later I do find it helpful. With Minnesota elections, through the last five years, “show your work” is essentially the result I was aiming for. Except, I’ve concluded, the election system has developed to a place where it truly cannot show its work, not meaningfully, unless the rules are changed. This book will reveal how this conclusion was arrived at but also focus on the reader’s participation in the kind of election system he or she would like to have. I have to follow my own admonishment or be criticized of never learning the lesson.
We could start this book by asking some basic questions: How much should verification, transparency, and accuracy be valued in elections? What about security? And timeliness of results? Or the capability to remedy mistakes? To what extent should the rules be flexible, including the statutes as well as the administrative rules which the Minnesota secretary of state may add on? What is the relationship between Federal and State rules for elections and what happens if the rules for each are in conflict and yet candidates are all on the same ballot? The questions that began this paragraph seem like a solid starting point, except that they require detailed definitions, definitions which many cannot agree on. Even terminology like decentralization becomes confusing when people like Steve Simon claim Minnesota has such a system. The latter questions, about different rules for different types of elections, could come to pass if there are federal changes that are not accepted locally, however I don’t see this outcome as likely to hold for long. (It is hard to imagine a system persisting for an extended duration where mail-in ballots are accepted for state level elections but not for elections where a federal candidate is on the ballot.)
There are other kinds of questions, such as: Would it be outside the Minnesota Constitution or the rules governing how statutes are written and applied to prevent someone like me, who thinks we should have a bigger discussion about all this, from voting?; Why not pass a law to use artificial intelligence programs to decide who is fit and unfit to cast a ballot?; Then, couldn’t a program be run within the voter rolls on election day to remove votes from those who have lost favor with the government? (Can the reader tell that the writer is not amused by the overall quite negative influence of government in his and his family’s life?)
The line of questioning in the preceding paragraph—bringing in AI to weed out dissenters—leads to a utopia of which I wish not to be a part. Instead, suppose there is an alternative… Is it possible to design an election system where every voter wins?
Elections have been describe as an input/output system, with inputs being 1) registered voters, 2) ballots, and 3) vote counts; and the output being 1) the reported results. Narrowing the scope to these four areas allows a succinct introduction into surveying the current system, before embarking to create a new version.
When each step of an election can be checked, or even audited (possibly in real time), then one part of our governance system increases in value: the elected roles. Audit well enough, correct mistakes quickly enough, and then every voter wins. (The quickest way to enable more complete audits is to simplify the overall process. At minimum this removes workload from administrators post election receiving data requests from citizen auditors.) Then, even with increased confidence in that elected part of that entity referred to as ‘government’, there is still the remainder of it over which the citizen must be watchful.
Today, in Minnesota, it is clear that various parts of the government have either failed to identify, or failed to remediate, or arguably even facilitated fraud of different sorts. Fake elections seem to amplify this facilitation because the citizens lose the original method of term limits, where a bad apple is simply voted out of office. To put it leniently, we could say there was too much load on the system and (so far, in mid 2026) $9 billion has been wasted by the government itself (in Minnesota). Who knows what a thorough audit of all of Minnesota’s government will find. There are estimates at the federal level in the trillions and that is before looking at black budget or off-book projects, which arguably hide tech both unrelated and related to UAP/UFO/USO.
This book is not going to engage directly with those areas. But it is reasonable to ask, What can we do in the face of the duration and scale of the present abuses of government programs (which seem facilitated by some within the government)? Beginning with an auditable election system is one starting point.
The Impact of Elections
Consider the impact of elections… Executive branch roles like an elected governor in Minnesota not only appoints about 20 commissioners to the major state departments but also appoints upwards of 500 government positions. The secretary of state appoints key roles like the director of elections and the liaison to the legislature. Elected roles in the judicial branch are not always heavily contested but that could change. And of course, the sixty-seven (67) senators and one hundred and thirty-four (134) representatives comprising the Minnesota Legislature who (sometimes write and) vote on bills can in the case of election acts change the very rules of the election game. Because of their function to vote on rule changes to the process itself, there is an advantage in ensuring those candidates who actually won their elections take the seats. Right now, instead, we live near the worst case scenario: we cannot say for certain in many cases, especially in lower-turnout local elections, such as for city council or town board. This could quite simply be addressed with a heightened focus and rigor in auditing or by creating a new version of elections.
Of course, elections in Minnesota have seemingly almost always (if not always) been hotly contested and also continuously evolving as a system. Beginning with the very first gubernatorial election in October 1857, which, after claims of voter registration fraud and other issues, was only sorted out seven (7) months later despite questions remaining unanswered. The recent two or three decades have brought significant changes, such as electronic centralized voter rolls, electronic tabulation and reporting software, and absentee voting (by mail); these changes will be highlighted in the writing to come. But, for emphasis, this book is disinterested in the particulars of unique elected officers and their party affiliation; instead, this book aims to explore the ideas, feasibility, and actual implementation surrounding the overall election system and, in particular, election audits. One immediate approach to improve auditability is to simplify the overall process. We will have this discussion. Let’s start with where we are now…
The Input/Output System and the Six Phases
In Minnesota, this writer, a five-year citizen auditor, sees serious issues with every step of the input/output system (voter registration, ballots, vote counts, and reported results) that will be referred to in this book as the election system; maybe this conclusion will also be the reader’s conclusion, or perhaps not. Every step has been called into question through personal experience interacting with the system. It is not too late to reverse course where certain ideas have led to a decrease in confidence in the overall government entity, ideas such as the major push for electronic machines and software (with proprietary code) which are difficult to audit or no-excuse absentee ballots that go through the mail.
This book will go through each phase (6) of an election: voter registration, absentee ballots, election day, election night, reporting, and audits. Within that framework, the rules of the game, the Minnesota Election Laws, a roughly 500-page PDF document comprising chapters 200-212 of the Minnesota Statutes (and others relevant to elections) and the Minnesota Rules Related to Elections (same document) created by the Minnesota Secretary of State to be treated as law, will be frequently referenced. (For emphasis: In Minnesota, in addition to the statutes, the secretary of state may add rules: the 500-page PDF as of 2026 includes about 330 pages of statutes and an additional 130 pages of administrative rules—for those in the cheap seats, this means almost 30 percent of the election law is written by the Executive Branch, not the Legislature.)
It may seem, based on reading the current 500-page document, noticing the trend within the Minnesota Legislature, and hearing the claims of the Minnesota Secretary of State, that there’s no clear path (anytime soon) to even reviewing or auditing the digital records of our most recent elections, let alone more pivotal changes, even though ALL records, digital and physical, must be kept for 22 months according to federal law, under 52 USC § 20701, with penalties outlined in § 20702. Therefore, with ballots and records likely not retained from previous elections, it’s becoming difficult to even say, for sure, what happened, not only in a recent election but in ANY election occurring prior to 22 months ago.
Meanwhile, the workload for election administrators is probably at an all-time high: even with iPads that check voters in; even with the electronic tabulators to count/tally votes and the modems which transmit results embedded in those tabulators (modems which, when used in 2020 and 2022 and 2024 and 2026, were uncertified by the EAC); even with software which aggregates reporting. There is still so much work to do prior to the 46 days of absentee voting, and during those 46 days, and then election day, election night, and post election. Electronics were sold with the promise of efficiency and efficacy but they haven’t delivered. Ask your city clerk, county elections manager, county auditor, if they have less work or more relative to 15 or 20 years ago. Perhaps this is why Minn. Stat. § 201.171 and § 201.121 give county auditors forty-two (42) days to balance their books, with an optional 28-day extension, for a total of seventy (70) days. Maybe the way Taiwan does elections, tech-free, on a single day, could give Americans, and Minnesotans, a model to borrow or at minimum, from which to learn. Or maybe we could use methods developed by the likes of Mark Cook (handcountroadshow.com) or Rick Weible (uscase.org).
This Book’s Focus: Every Voter Wins
My focus as a citizen auditor has shifted. Early on (for me), in 2021 and 2022, a catalog of violations was developed; then there was a shift to pointing out obvious areas for improvement that are also sustainable; lately, the focus has been on sparking conversation toward an elevated system aligning with the principle, “Every voter wins”. It’s hard to say this enough: I really don’t care which politican wins any given election. (We don’t need more politicians tied to donors and lobbyists and other groups who have been shown their commitment to derailing America.) Some of the violations and immediate areas for update will be sprinkled throughout the book but it is probably better if the reader thinks independently to develop an informed opinion; then, with this background and individual thought, a larger conversation where all who desire to participate can co-create the reality we’d like to see.
Previous books, beginning with early versions of [S]elections in Minnesota, then Auditing Minnesota: The 2022 SOS Campaign, and then Simon’s Sensors: The Secret of the iPads (excerpted in the Appendices), were early tries at exploring the synthesis this writing offers. I have opted to keep the title of this work as [S]elections in Minnesota, for several reasons, one of which is because the three words form the acronym “SIM”, short for simulation, which is an accurate depiction of our election system; there is the perception of an election but in reality it is closer to a simulation—this terminology first came to me from researcher Draza Smith, who at the 2021 Cyber Symposium said, “Elections aren’t counted, they are calculated.” Because you and I bought what the system sold, for how many years, does not make it so… we can remain ignorant but not avoid the consequences of our ignorance, especially when that ignorance is wilful. I am grateful to readers who purchased or read the early work and especially those who gave their reflections, which furthered my thinking.
As a friend has said, the stories of these times will be told around the campfire, as all stories are, passed down from generation to generation. Please bear that in mind as what is shared in this book comes merely from my experience and does not intend to be authoritative. It is a way to put my observations, recollections, and occasional insights into readers’ hands and minds.
Its aim, as a lofty but achievable goal, is to start a statewide conversation at the legislative level, at county and municipal meetings, and at the dinner table.
Think and verify everything for oneself to the extent possible. It is sometimes hard but often refreshing to discover one has been quite wrong, if only to take responsibility for any harm done and to prepare to learn the next error in one’s thinking. It is quite trivial to be tricked when one’s attention is unfocused.
The recent years have been interesting and I anticipate the interestingness will continue, increase, and go well beyond merely interesting.
Will you watch it all ‘happen to you’ or participate in the unfolding?
Erik van Mechelen
March 2026
(Revised August 2026)