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Capitol View®
Catharine Richert

Entenza camp files complaint on Otto voter ID claims

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The voter ID  issue is making an appearance in an unexpectedly heated DFL primary battle for Minnesota Auditor.

A campaign staffer for Matt Entenza, who filed paperwork last week to run against Auditor Rebecca Otto, says in a complaint filed with the Office of Administrative Hearings that Otto violated state law by misrepresenting her record on voter ID in a Facebook post last week.

Entenza says Otto supported voter ID legislation when she served in the Minnesota House in the early 2000s.

But Otto told a supporter on Facebook that "[Voter ID legislation] was not around in 2003. No one can find a bill on the issue when I served."

The Entenza campaign's complaint cites two votes Otto cast in 2003 to support the complaint. The complaint contends that Otto violated a state law designed to prevent  false campaign claims.

Otto's campaign declined to give an immediate response.

UPDATE: DFL party chair Ken Martin had this to say in response to Entenza's complaint, calling it "cheap lies and twisting of the facts..."

“Minnesotans must be able to count on their State Auditor to get the facts straight and not distort for his or her personal gain. That’s what we are seeing in Matt Entenza’s complaint against our DFL-endorsed, two-term State Auditor Rebecca Otto. Entenza is trying to make the case that State Auditor Otto supports Voter ID because, as a House member, she voted for a non-controversial compliance bill the state had to get through to bring Minnesota into compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002. The fact is that the bill passed unanimously in the House, with Entenza voting for it too. I worked alongside State Auditor Otto to defeat the Voter ID constitutional amendment in 2012 and know firsthand her dedication to seeing the defeat of this harmful amendment."

Here's the complaint: