After months of court testimony exposing flaws in Minnesota's U.S. Senate election, the state Senate passed a measure Friday that would make it easier for people to register to vote and to vote in person before Election Day or by absentee ballot.
The bill authorizes the secretary of state to permit Minnesotans to register online and to vote in person 18 days before an election, and gives them a better chance of correcting a rejected absentee ballot.
The bill also moves up primary elections from September to June.
The measure passed 41-22, with DFLers saying changes in election law were needed to make voting easier. Republicans said the bill needlessly expanded the time frame for elections and relaxed rules needed to prevent fraud.
The House has advanced measures that deal with provisions similar to some in the Senate bill.
The changes came in the aftermath of seven weeks of testimony in the U.S. Senate election trial between DFLer Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman. The trial revealed mistakes by voters and inconsistent practices by local election officials involving absentee ballots and voter registration.
In a direct response to a controversial ruling in the dispute, one provision of the Senate measure would prevent a court from allowing candidates to veto decisions by county officials tallying rejected absentee ballots in an election recount.
The Minnesota Supreme Court allowed Franken and Coleman to veto absentee ballots that counties said were improperly rejected and should be counted. The counties had identified 1,346 such ballots, but the candidates rejected several hundred of them.
