Minnesota Democrats announce plan to expand voting access

Minnesota Democrats say disinformation about elections has flourished in the two years since the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, and voters anxious about the future of democracy helped propel their party into complete control of state government.

Now they want to use that power to expand access to the ballot, while strengthening protections for election workers who have been the targets of threats since 2020.

"The attacks have not stopped. The disinformation and lies about our election system have only grown," said DFL Rep. Emma Greenman of Minneapolis, co-chair of a new democracy caucus unveiled Friday on the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack. "This didn't happen overnight, and there are no quick fixes to the damage that has been done."

DFL Gov. Tim Walz is encouraging the Democratic-led Legislature to think big on proposals that would make voting easier, inspired to lean into the effort by the push in GOP-led states over the past two years to restrict ballot access. Across the country, Democratic leaders are trying to go on the offense on voting legislation.

"We've seen nationally, when Republicans have unified party control of a state, they've been pretty effective at passing a lot of legislation," said political science professor Kathryn Pearson of the University of Minnesota. "It will be interesting to see if the DFL in Minnesota is effective in a similar scenario."

The Minnesota House and Senate this week introduced bills that would enact automatic voter registration, pre-register 16- and 17-year-olds to vote and allow voters to be put on a list to permanently vote by mail.

An election-related bill that could be one of the quickest to pass is a proposal to restore voting rights to those with felony convictions who are now on probation. Democrats also want to make one of the first overhauls to the state's campaign finance laws since the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. That decision led to an explosion of outside money influencing state elections.

"Minnesotans told us loud and clear that protecting and expanding democracy is critical and that they agree that the threat of extremism is real and active," said Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville, who is sponsoring a package of election changes this year.

Republicans in the state Senate attacked the DFL proposals, saying there's a tradition at the Capitol to move election bills only with bipartisan support.

"The fact that my colleagues across the aisle are more interested in passing their hyper-partisan wish lists than they are in finding common ground on our elections is a disservice to all voters," said Sen. Mark Koran of North Branch, the lead Republican on the Elections Committee.

Many of Democrats' proposals have circulated at the Capitol for years, but they weren't heard by the GOP-led Senate. Since 2020, Republicans have pushed to limit the number of people who can vote by mail and revived a proposal to require photo ID at the polls, efforts that didn't get hearings in the DFL-led House.

While the parties have worked together in the past to pass election law changes, divisions over the issue have only grown in the past two years.

"There are members of the Legislature who are election deniers," said Greenman, who is also a voting rights attorney. She and other members of the new democracy caucus were sworn into elected office for the first time one day before the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Greenman said she is hopeful Democrats can get bipartisan support for a package of bills that aims to protect the 30,000 volunteers who represent different political beliefs and help make elections happen each cycle.

Roughly two dozen counties in Minnesota were also targeted this fall by a group pushing to have ballots officially counted by hand. That push by conservative activists included Stearns County, despite voters there overwhelmingly supporting Donald Trump in the past two presidential races.

"Those votes are counted in the church basement; they are counted at the elementary school," Stearns County Commissioner Joe Perske said Friday. "They are not sent to Washington; they aren't sent to St. Paul. They are counted by your neighbors."

Democrats feel emboldened by the results of the 2022 election, which saw voters reject candidates in Minnesota and across the country who denied or questioned the 2020 results. They also re-elected many Democratic secretaries of state, including Steve Simon, who won by the largest margin of any statewide official in 2022.

Simon plans to unveil his top priorities for the legislative session next week, and pieces of the Democrats' election agenda will get their first hearings in committees.

Reflecting Friday on what's changed in Minnesota since Jan. 6, 2021, DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman of Brooklyn Park said: "One word: trifecta."