The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office announced today that it has charged — or will charge — 47 cases of felon voting and double-counting, significantly less than the number of alleged cases brought to the prosecutor’s office by the Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group.

In a letter from Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman to County Commissioner Jeff Johnson, Freeman said that seven felon voters and/or double voters have been charged and convicted, with 40 cases pending.

Here is the text of Freeman’s letter (PDF).

Freeman also wrote that Minnesota Majority leaders sent a list of more than 800 names of alleged felon voters last year. Later, after receiving notice that the 800 allegations were insufficient to charge, the Minnesota Majority submitted a list of 451 names. The organization’s facts were significantly inaccurate, Freeman said.

MinnPost has reported on this issue before.

The matter of proving these cases can be difficult, as was shown in a controversial case in Crookston earlier this year.

Even before the Minnesota Majority allegations, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office had begun sending suspicious-voter cases to county attorneys statewide, and Hennepin County was independently looking into potential voter fraud.

The county said these 47 cases “represent all the chargeable offenses resulting from our investigation into all alleged offenses.”

In a release, Freeman’s office said, “There was no evidence of any organized effort to enable or promote this activity.”