In December, MnDOT asked Minnesotans to submit “creative, witty, punny and fun ideas for snowplow names.”
They collected submissions until late January, and MnDOT received about 23,000 entries.
“We’ve narrowed the list down to 50 finalists, and now it’s your turn to vote for your favorites,” MnDOT posted online this week.
Minnesota Reformer filed a public records request for all the submissions, and then normalized the data to account for differences in excess spacing and capitalization.
“[ICE] seeks to deport and criminalize undocumented people in ways that grossly violate their human rights,” he said in an interview Friday.
“It was meant to be a fun and lighthearted contest, not a politically controversial thing,” said Jake Loesch, MnDOT’s spokesman.
The state also disregarded snowplow naming ideas based on political figures – Amy Snowbuchar, Tim Plowlenty, Walter Plowdale, Plow Wellstone, and George W. Push, to name just a few. »