Minnesota Dems trying to kick Trump off ballot

Democrats in Minnesota are going forward with efforts to have Donald Trump’s name removed from the November ballot in their state.

Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chairman Ken Martin filed a legal petition with the state Supreme Court looking to remove Trump from the ballot.

“The Minnesota GOP did not elect to elect alternate presidential electors at the state convention earlier this year. After being notified that they had failed to provide the names of alternative electors by the Secretary of State’s office, Republicans decided to appoint alternate electors in a closed-door meeting rather than electing them. This is violation of state law,” the Minnesota DFL’s statement reads.

The DFL filed suit in Minnesota State Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon and the court required both sides to file responses by Friday afternoon.

In response to the court’s request, the Minnesota Republican Party said “It would be an incredible intrusion into the democratic process for this court to accept the (DFL’s) invitation to convert what was — at most — a technical defeat … into a basis for effectively awarding the state of Minnesota to Hillary Clinton.”

Some counties have already sent out early voting ballots and a million ballots have been printed. The Secretary of State says that if they don’t have an answer by Monday, they will not have enough time to make any changes to the ballot.

While the court hasn’t indicated if a decision will come over the weekend, those covering the court say that the possibility is open.

The DFL filing raises some serious questions for Clinton’s viability.

Minnesota is teetering between likely Hillary and leaning Hillary by the most recent state polls. Why do Minnesota dems feel the need to hand their state to Hillary instead of letting their voters have a choice?

The most recent state poll from Minnesota was the Washington Post/Survey Monkey online poll done in August-September and wasn’t a scientific survey, but it showed a 9 point lead for Hillary. The most recent scientific poll was the Star Tribune in April which showed the Democrat having a 13 point edge.

Hillary has been slipping in the nationwide polls and perhaps Minnesota’s democrats have some internal polling that isn’t inspiring confidence that Hillary can win their state in a fair contest.

There is a bit of short-sightedness on the part of the DFL. Even if Hillary is in some danger, the blowback from ‘stealing’ the state could affect the down-ballot races and future elections if independents are turned-off by the unnecessary political maneuver.

With the risk of maddening the state’s independent voters in-mind, Minnesota Democrats must be incredibly worried that Hillary could lose their state. That’s a 20 point shift in the electoral math as calculated by CDN, RCP and most other electoral analysis. Winning Minnesota would give Trump a path to 270 without Pennsylvania and that … is just something Democrats can’t allow to happen.