Our Broken Politics – Brian Stalboerger

Running to represent the citizens of south Maplewood and Woodbury

The way out of dysfunctional politics begins in our neighborhoods.

We have more in common with each other in south Maplewood and Woodbury than we do with the leaders of either party. This is true even though we have large differences between us. At the very least, the leaders of both parties have more in common with each other than they do with us. It is not necessary to give up your strongly held beliefs on either side. However, we do need to pay attention to common ground that we may not realize we have. If nothing changes our current trajectory, we are headed for civic disaster.

There are big challenges ahead of us. AI job displacement won’t care if you are a Republican or Democrat. Our federal debt is out of control and neither party is doing anything about it. The federal government is not coming to anyone’s rescue. If they do, any cure they provide will be worse than the disease. It will be up to families, neighbors, and communities to pick up the pieces.

Money in Politics

We should work towards a rule in state and national politics that political money cannot cross political boundaries. Why should California liberals or Texas conservatives and their millions have a say in who is elected to represent Minnesota? Past efforts at campaign finance reform have made the problem worse, partly because politicians built in back doors. This rule would be easily tracked and easily enforceable.

A famous 2014 study by Princeton University professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University professor Benjamin Page showed that average Americans like you and me only got our desired laws passed when they happened to coincide with what the wealthy donors wanted. Outside of that, the average American citizen EVEN COLLECTIVELY has very close to zero impact on U.S. federal law. The most direct way to change this is to unite as Americans and work toward an Article V convention which will bypass Congress and implement needed reforms.

Election Integrity

It all starts here. Elections have to be trusted. It is not enough to just be accurate, people have to trust that they are accurate. This requires more than sound bytes. It requires responsibility from both sides. Both Democrats and Republicans have questioned election results in the past, although the president has been the loudest about this in the past few cycles. I have seen things that looked suspicious, but have done the work to track down why what might appear at first as evidence of election fraud does have a valid explanation. It is crucial for people like myself to do this. Both to take a charge seriously, but to be open to and set the record straight if an honest explanation is found.

Distrust of an accurate election result is just as bad of an outcome as rubber stamping fraudulent election results. Either way, there is damage to the healthy functioning of the state.

Even if our elections were 100% foolproof in the past, this is a time to double-down on ensuring accurate election results because of new challenges before us. Could AI unknowingly infect election computers or be used by bad actors overseas? One of the methods used in mail-in voting to verify is the last 4 digits of our SSN. But a 2024 data breach exposed 272 million of our SSNs to anyone that wants them online.

When agencies such as the UN bring elections into a new area or after a conflict, there are five pillars of a secure election that they build into any election process.

Identity Verification & Voter Eligibility (“Proof of Identity”)
Voting Integrity & Equality (“One Ballot Per Voter”)
Ballot Confidentiality (“Privacy”)
End-to-End Auditability (“Paper Trail”)
Chain of Custody & Physical Security

With mail-in voting and the SSN data breach, 4 out of 5 of these pillars become very difficult to lock down. We can have absentee voting as we have for a long time in Minnesota. But we simply do not have the luxury of allowing no excuse mail-in voting. There was never a robust debate when this was implemented that engaged all stakeholders – which is all Minnesota voters. That is part of why it is not trusted today.

Reform how the Legislature does its work

Minnesota is one of only 4 states that still allow Covid era remote or proxy voting. This is very damaging to how the Legislature is supposed to work. Lawmakers need to debate face to face and actually listen to each other, or they are not listening to voters. Everyone must go back to work in person in the Legislature.

I will also work with other Legislators to make sure that the minority is able to offer amendments in the long established methods, that bills are smaller and compact so that people are not forced to swallow bad measures snuck onto “must pass” bills, and so that not everything is left to a small group of legislative leaders and the governor in last minute backroom deals.