By The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party has stripped State Sen. Omar Fateh of its mayoral endorsement, citing “substantial failures” in the electronic voting system at last month’s convention. The rare reversal—announced late Thursday—has upended the Minneapolis mayoral race and sharpened accusations of “brazen cheating” from Mayor Jacob Frey’s allies.
The DFL’s Constitution, Bylaws & Rules Committee determined that nearly 176 ballots were never counted and a candidate was improperly eliminated during the July 19 convention. The findings, which also pointed to unsecured check-in sheets and lost delegate credentials, cast doubt on the integrity of the endorsement that had vaulted Fateh ahead of Frey. Declaring the process fatally flawed, the committee invalidated the result and declined to call a new convention, leaving the race without a party-backed candidate.
On Thursday, Minnesota DFL chair Richard Carlbom said, “After a thoughtful and transparent review of the challenges, the Constitution, Bylaws & Rules Committee found substantial failures in the Minneapolis Convention’s voting process on July 19, including an acknowledgement that a mayoral candidate was errantly eliminated from contention.”
Carlbom added, “Now it’s time to turn our focus to unity and our common goal: electing DFL leaders focused on making life more affordable for Minnesotans and holding Republicans accountable for the chaos and confusion they’ve unleashed on Minnesotans.”
For Fateh, a 35-year-old Somali-American democratic socialist, the decision marks a stunning reversal of fortune. His July endorsement had been framed as proof that Minneapolis’s progressive insurgency—aligned with figures like U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar—could outmaneuver the city’s centrist establishment.
Frey’s campaign seized on the ruling, with one staffer describing the committee’s conclusions as “more damning than we could have imagined.” The same aide insisted the irregularities were “no mere error but a deliberate attempt to manipulate the outcome.” Fateh’s backers, by contrast, accused party leaders of nullifying grassroots support to protect the incumbent.
🚨 BREAKING: A staffer from Jacob Frey’s campaign on Omar Fateh losing his mayoral endorsement from the Minnesota DFL:
“The CBRC findings are more damning than our campaign could have possibly imagined. This wasn't an error. This was brazen cheating.” pic.twitter.com/JCjujDq6H9
— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) August 21, 2025
Frey, in office since 2018, has long clashed with the city’s far-left progressive wing. His critics fault him for resisting calls to dismantle the police after George Floyd’s killing; his supporters counter that he stabilized a city in crisis. The latest controversy intensifies that divide, transforming a local contest into a proxy war for the DFL’s future.
Minneapolis Mayor Frey thinks that the race was rigged, citing missing ballots, insecure election machines
Omar Fateh's win is now overturned pic.twitter.com/Zy3ealCXVh
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 22, 2025
This is the second time liberals have found themselves unable to do basic vote counting. Earlier in the year, Democrats pushed out liberal activist David Hogg after he won a vote at convention. The party’s chairman, Ken Martin, who used to run the party in Minnesota, claimed that the party had not followed the rules correctly.
The episode has also reignited debate over the reliability of electronic voting. A 2023 MIT study warned of precisely these risks, finding that unverified digital systems can alter outcomes undetected. The committee’s report underscored that point: technical errors alone might have changed the endorsement’s result. While most U.S. jurisdictions now use paper-based audit trails, the Minneapolis case highlights the vulnerabilities that persist even in modern systems. Election scholars note the irony: a party that denounces threats to democratic norms now finds its own processes mired in questions of legitimacy.
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