To be proactive this year, I decided to schedule a post weeks out from February 27th to show where all the Precinct Caucuses are for Republicans in the Local Party Units aka BPOUs in Saint Paul. However to use the CaucusFinder Tool which is very helpful in the past to find ones Precinct Caucus location for whatever Major Party you choose you need to input addresses into it.

So using a list of addresses from past delegates in St Paul from CD4 GOP those addresses were inputted into the CaucusFinder in the first week of January 2024 and there was an issue that arose.

CaucusFinder Problem

The HD 66B Republican Precinct Caucus Location was set up in December, after helping out a City Council Candidate in 2023, to be Johnson Aerospace & Engineering High School (aka Johnson High School) in St Paul on Arcade St. Then inputting the address of someone in HD 67A it came back as the same location at Johnson High School. Oh the horror! I thought that I had double-booked the High School for the Precinct Caucuses. Then putting in another HD 67A address I found it to be in the location list below.

It was curious why that one address went to Johnson High School and not the actual one. So I went to the Ramsey County GIS Precinct Map, and found out the location to be in St Paul Ward 6 Precinct 7. I inputted other addresses in the precinct and they came up as Johnson High School. This was Clue #1 about what was going on with CaucusFinder.

I put in another address in SD 67 that was further east into the District and the caucus location was found to be the one below.

Then I looked up the caucus locations in SD 65, and HD 66A which are listed below.

I then put in an address of an old friend who lives in the St Thomas University area which is in SD 64. The caucus location for that address was Johnson High School! What was going on?

From the Ramsey County GIS Precinct Map I found out the address was in St Paul Ward 4 Precinct 12. This was Clue #2.

I put in an address near St Paul Avenue and Davern St and found the correct location below but it was named Ramsey Middle School. This was Clue #3.

Mystery Solved

Clue #3 was a curious one that tickled a memory of a conversation with Ramsey County Elections Manager David Triplett in late summer of 2022, when I was making updates to the polling locations for the August Primary and the General Election. I like to add maps next to the addresses of locations that are important so readers can make plans to go to places they might not have been to before.  The Google Map location showed Ramsey Middle School to have been changed to a new name, Hidden River Middle School. I told him about it and he replied a week later saying I was correct.

So whatever was going on with Caucusfinder it had to be something that happened in 2022.

Clues #1 & #2 answered the “what happened” in 2022.

Well Redistricting had happened and St Paul Ward 6 Precinct 7 and Ward 4 Precinct 12 had been in old HD 66B prior to Redistricting.

So this meant that the Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon’s office hadn’t updated the precincts inside of the Legislative Districts since Redistricting started in February 2022. The final Ward & Precinct map wasn’t approved in Ramsey County until April 2022. This may have led to Candidate Greg Copeland thinking he still lived in Ramsey County District 6 instead of being actually in District 3. One would have to check to make sure this was the case.

So what has the MN SOS and the Minnesota Legislative Body that does oversight of that office been doing for the last 2 years?  That’s a Good Question.

Action to Fix It

I contacted the MNGOP Deputy Chair Donna Bergstrom and told her about how the CaucusFinder was messed up. I also sent a note to Ramsey County Elections Manager David Triplett as well. I knew Mr Triplett couldn’t do anything about it but he said later that he contacted the MN SOS Office about the issue. Sent a note to Senator Mark Koran because I didn’t know how deep the problem was.

I also sent a note to the MN Secretary of State’s Office explaining what I had found out about Caucusfinder. Finally I sent a note to Alpha News MN’s Reporter Liz Collin, just to make sure some sort of action would take place on this. I could see people being sent to Precinct Caucus locations outside of their Legislative District and being super angry about it.

I heard back from Deputy Chair Bergstrom as well as Liz Collin. I didn’t hear back from the MN SOS office but the fact they took CaucusFinder offline and posted the above notice about it’s availability after February 7th says they got my message.

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This article I posted it largely to explain that the MN Secretary of State’s Tool of helping people find their Precinct Caucus Location was neglected for 2 years. I helped to make sure that Precinct Caucuses were not messed up in any way this year. I looked for Republican Party Caucus locations and not other Major Party locations, but I may have helped them to avoid major chaos in their party in choosing precinct delegates & alternates.

Tom Polachek HD 66B Republicans Vice Chair of the Website & Social Media, 2023 to the Present