Minnesota law lets any individual ask the state supreme court to correct "errors and omissions" on a ballot (Minn. Stat. §204B.44). People who see the exhibit reasonably ask why this project doesn't use it against HF 3900's question. We looked hard at it. Here is the honest answer.
In 2012, the League of Women Voters challenged the photo ID ballot question — a question whose text actually contradicted the amendment it described. The court let it through anyway, holding that the legislature's framing stands unless it amounts to a "palpable evasion" of the duty to put the amendment to a vote. Our complaint about HF 3900's question is an omission — a weaker legal claim than the 2012 mismatch that already lost.
The question has been public since May 2026. Courts routinely dismiss election challenges brought months later, on timing alone. Absentee voting starts in mid-September; a petition filed now would most likely be decided in a hurry, on lateness, producing nothing but a headline that says the court approved the question.
The only remedy a court could give is to knock the amendment off the ballot. This project is not the amendment's opponent — whether the endowment change is good policy is your call, not ours. A referee who sues to stop the game has stopped being a referee.
The strongest thing a lawsuit could produce — a justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court saying, in writing, that a ballot question deceived voters — already happened, in the 2012 case:
"This is a case in which the words of the ballot question were phrased to actively deceive and mislead."
Justice Alan Page, dissenting (joined by Justice Paul H. Anderson), League of Women Voters Minn. v. Ritchie, No. A12-0920, slip op. at D-12 (Minn. Aug. 27, 2012). His dissent calls that question "a classic bait and switch" (D-1).
The courts have told us, twice, that under current law nobody polices ballot-question wording. We take them at their word. That is the problem, and lawsuits can't fix it — a one-sentence law can.
The Quote What You Delete bill: a ballot question that deletes or modifies constitutional language must quote it, verbatim, on the ballot. No judge has to decide what "misleading" means; either the words are there or they aren't. Ready for the 2027 session.