Trump knows this and does not want to waste his time on what everyone already knows is a lost cause. IMO
You are correct. Trump is highly unlikely to win Minnesota. However, it is amateur hour to not (or barely miss) getting on the ballot. What about any down ticket candidates, local and state level? Should the GOP just rent a few U-Haul trucks and haul ass out of the state entirely?
I lived in Maryland for most of my life. Barring a miracle, Maryland is going to go for Hillary. But last year Maryland elected a Republican for governor.
My last MD congressional rep was Andy Harris and is a very solid conservative. He is running for re-election this year and is currently ahead of his democratic opponent.
But what might happen if Trump, knowing that he didn’t have much of a chance of carrying Maryland, didn’t bother to get on the MD ballot? Could that suppress GOP voter turnout? Does Trump even care about down ticket GOP candidates?
FWIW:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2016#Minnesotayou left out the part that the paperwork came from an alternate elector, which that person had not turned in..
I wonder why??? 
Um. Because the Trump campaign has no operations in MN and left it up to the state GOP, who evidently aren’t too bright either.
It turns out Minnesota Republicans skipped over one rather banal but important step: electing alternates for the electoral college. Minnesota Republicans elected their members to the electoral college — the people who actually cast the ballot for president and vice president — at their state convention in May. But apparently they forgot to elect alternates for those electors, a necessary step in Minnesota to certify your party gets on the ballot.
Minnesota GOP officials blamed new rules about requiring alternates for the confusion, and others have pointed out the state party's constitution didn't even allow for electing alternates.
But the bottom line is still this: The state Republican Party messed up — and Trump was the one who took the hit.
The state party's leaders got together and appointed alternates to try to fix the problem, and all their paperwork is expected to be in line to have Trump on the ballot this week (the deadline is Monday). But it's not clear that appointing alternates rather than electing them is even allowed under state party rules. Brodkorb told The Fix the party leaves itself vulnerable to legal challenges that could potentially knock Trump off the ballot again.
But to some degree, Trump has set himself for this sort of headache. Hehas largely outsourced the nuts and bolts of running his presidential campaign to the Republican Party, which in turn outsources a lot of the work to its state chapters. In many states, the local Republican Party is the one renting office space, hiring staff and launching get-out-the-vote efforts for Trump. And making sure he gets on the ballot.
It's technically the state party's job in Minnesota to make sure the presidential candidate gets on the ballot. But it's a reflection of the Trump campaign's disorganization that the campaign let this slip. It's a real possibility it would have missed the ballot entirely if Brodkorb hadn't gotten a call and started tweeting about it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/how-donald-trump-almost-missed-the-ballot-in-minnesota-and-what-that-says-about-his-campaign/You have to admit that it is sort of amusing that the pro-marijuana party – “Legal Marijuana Now” managed to put down the bong long enough to figure out how to get on the MN ballot – in fact I think it’s darn funny that they filed and got on the ballot before any of others.
