Dear MN GOP State Convention Delegates & Alternates:

 

We are looking forward to seeing you at the 2022 State Convention in Rochester in just a couple of weeks. This is an exciting year with a great deal of enthusiasm and opportunity for our party to make historic gains. Biden, Walz and the Democrats have failed and the voters are taking notice.

 

Our State Convention is a critical piece of our efforts to build a unified team to take on Walz and the Democrats this year. Our candidates and their staff and volunteers have been working hard for months and months to compete for your support for the Republican endorsement. More than 2,220 delegates – and a good many more alternates – will be traveling long distances from across the state to make their voice heard in endorsing our candidates.

 

Putting together a safe and secure convention that provides a memorable experience to delegates, alternates, campaigns and guests is a top priority, and a key piece of this is ensuring we have a slate of Republican candidates endorsed for our ticket. By prioritizing the business of securing endorsements for candidates for our statewide constitutional offices, we will better ensure a unified ticket of Republicans ready to work hard to beat the Democrats in November.

 

As part of these efforts, our convention planning includes the use of a safe, secure and accurate electronic voting system. With 14 statewide campaigns coming into the convention seeking endorsement by more than 2,200 elected delegates – and a limited within which to conduct convention business, this is a necessary step to make sure we give every opportunity to our attendees to have their voice heard in selecting our candidates.

 

We have heard many concerns and suggestions about voting. There have been some voices seeking to undermine this goal by attacking the integrity of using a safe, secure and effective electronic voting system. Many of these voices are doing so out of an attempt to keep the convention deadlocked, unable to give our delegates the opportunity to have their voices heard in endorsing candidates.

 

Our electronic voting system will be provided by a nationally recognized provider of electronic voting technology, Padgett Communications. They have successfully executed electronic voting systems for large events across the country since 1995. Their system is reliable, accurate and secure. It does not depend on users’ mobile device apps or wireless internet access, an important aspect to protect the security and reliability of our voting system and the integrity of our endorsements. Their services will include an on-site team to implement the technology, as well as to troubleshoot and support if necessary.

 

Voices critical of using electronic voting are rehashing some of the problems experienced during the remote online conventions of 2020 to misinform and discredit the reliable and proven technology. The online voting system that failed at our 2020 state convention and the in-person system we are planning to use are not comparable. Each voting delegate or alternate will be handed a device connected directly to the closed and secure system in the arena not on a public website. The system will track which devices are in which BPOU segment (but we will not know which delegate has which devices) so we can provide a report showing vote totals by BPOUs. More than that, the devices will have a display screen on them showing connectivity and vote choices cast by the voters. Anyone comparing the two systems is comparing apples and oranges.

 

We understand that no system is foolproof – even paper or scanned ballots could be vulnerable to tampering, human error, and more. Nevertheless, out of an abundance of caution, we will be prepared to use paper ballots as a backup in an emergency.

 

We look forward to seeing you in Rochester as we gather to select our unified Republican ticket for victory in 2022!

 

Sincerely,

 

David Hann

Chairman

Republican Party of Minnesota