Sen. Mike Parry, GOP colleagues dispute secretary of state’s amendment actions
MinnPost photo by James Nord
Committee Chairman Mike Parry expressed the view that Secretary of State Mark Ritchie could be improperly campaigning against the Voter ID amendment.
A key Senate committee is investigating Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s conduct related to the Photo ID and Marriage constitutional amendments slated to appear before voters in November.
The Senate State Government Innovation and Veterans Committee met Friday to air concerns about how Ritchie and Attorney General Lori Swanson’s actions in renaming the controversial ballot questions.
Republicans, and committee chairman Mike Parry in particular, expressed the view that Ritchie could be improperly campaigning against the Voter ID amendment during what he has billed as “educational” talks with local elections officials.
Adding to the political theater surrounding the amendments — which also includes multiple lawsuits and disputes over the amendment’s ballot titles — neither Ritchie nor Swanson showed up to testify before the committee.
The secretary of state has stayed out of the limelight since recently renaming the amendments.
Parry said he is concerned that Ritchie could be violating two sections of campaign finance law, namely making misleading statements to the public and not registering his activities as a ballot question committee.
“Is there an active campaign by the secretary of state’s office … to actively campaign against a constitutional amendment?” Parry asked members of the committee.
Parry, Sen. Dave Thompson and Sen. Paul Gazelka led the push criticizing Ritchie’s alleged partisan abuses. The secretary of state, who is halfway through a four-year term, has raised many concerns about the impact of the proposed Voter ID amendment.
Ritchie and other activists are concerned that the amendment could end Election Day registration in Minnesota — a contention Republicans vehemently reject — and could change standards for in-person and absentee voting. They also have raised issues with the implementation of provisional balloting, which they say could significantly expand the timeframe of declaring election winners.
Because Ritchie and Swanson were absent from the hearing, Democrats on the committee stepped in as surrogates to defend the partisan constitutional officers.
“That is definitely his duty,” DFL Sen. Barb Goodwin said. “It’s his duty to tell people what he thinks this law will do.”
Among those testifying were Sen. Scott Newman, the Photo ID amendment’s chief author in the Senate, and Dan McGrath, executive director of the conservative political group Minnesota Majority.
MinnPost photo by James NordSen. Scott Newman, the Photo ID amendment's chief author in the Senate, attended Parry's committee hearing on Friday.
“The secretary of state appears to be actively campaigning against the Photo ID amendment,” McGrath told the committee.
Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the nonpartisan state Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, was reluctant to address the committee’s main question: Do Ritchie’s actions count as an educational initiative or as a campaign against the amendment.
There are “too many facts that are not known,” Goldsmith said.
Adding to the confusion, Parry and Sen. Julianne Ortman are part of the two lawsuits Republicans have filed against Ritchie for renaming the amendments. Their attorney actually prevented a representative from the attorney general’s office from testifying before the committee.
Because the naming issue is under litigation, Bert Black, an attorney in the secretary of state’s office, also was reluctant to speak broadly to many of committee members’ questions.
Parry said his committee has the power to issue subpoenas, bring the matter to court or attempt to recall Ritchie. A timeframe for potential action is unclear.
“This is a serious matter, and we need to continue to address it and follow it with open transparency,” Parry said.
Ritchie announced in early July that he was changing the Photo ID amendment’s title to: “Changes to in-person & absentee voting & voter registration; provisional ballots.”
The original title, passed by the Legislature in April, is “Photo identification required for voting.”
In late June, Ritchie renamed the marriage amendment to read: "Limiting the status of marriage to opposite sex couples." Its original 2011 title is "Recognition of marriage solely between one man and one woman."
Republicans, including Thompson, raised the same issues that the GOP-led Legislature has made before the courts: Ritchie breached the separation of powers in usurping the Legislature’s authority to name the amendment.
“This is a separation of powers issue,” Thompson said. “Clearly the constitution grants the Legislature the power” to name amendments.
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Comments (27)
Why?
Why did the DFL members of the committee dignify this farce with their presence? It is a pointless exercise beating the same old Republican drums ("They're picking on us! Just because we want to disenfranchise citizens!"). The conclusions that will be reached can be predicted by anyone with any sense. Why pretend it's any kind of legitimate legislative endeavor (is anyone getting per diem for their participation?).
Sound and fury, signifying nothing. Fill in the rest.
Republicans are trying to create a smokescreen
The constitution does NOT grant the legislature the power to title amendments. The Secretary of State is required by state law to do so. The republicans know that if all voters understood the ramifications of these amendments, they would defeat them. So the republicans are generating a smokescreen - essentially by lying.
The farce is
The secretary of state.
No one is being disenfranchised. If you do not like photo ID for voting what is the solution for ensuring only one vote one person. When I was in college not that long ago many of my peers bragged that they voted at a local polling place near campus, their home out of state, or in some cases voted in Minneapolis at the U and at their parents home in suburbia. What are you afraid of? Someone from the DFL called me this week and when I asked a question on the party's position on voter rights the representative informed me that voting righs should be extended to resident aliens also. Interesting? I thought that voting was for US citizens. 2 or 4 years is not enough time to have a picture ID? Maybe thoses buses that the do-gooders cart around DFL voters to the polls could make some stops at the ID center within those two years.
Vote yes on photo ID
Anecdotal
Did you report the felony violation of your peers, or is this just a convenient story for you to tell?
And did you check to see if it is actually part of the DFL platform that resident aliens should be allowed to vote? Or are you just passing along a story which could very well be the result of a misunderstanding either on your part, on the part of the caller, or in some measure both?
Until and unless you see it as part of an official document published by the DFL, this claim - also - qualifies as anecdotal.
Reply to Pat
I was 20 years old and I did not report the felony violations.
The DFL called me at home, I didn't call them, the caller ID said DFL (probably a republican operative in disguise) I asked specifically on the DFL platform on this issue and the person who called me gave the information I mentioned above. Either the DFL sends very mis-informed people to make calls for money or it's part of the platform, either way it's not good.
I am simply discussing my experience, there is voter fraud in this state.
Vote yes on photo ID.
photo
And how would a photograph stop these fraudulent voters? If they exist. You don't really know and frankly I doubt the story.
Reply to Ginny
A photo ID would stop for example college students from voting abentee at their parents house and then trying to vote with a student ID or a voucher system near campus. It happens, you can doubt the story, but that is like saying because only two speeding tickets were given out on the highway last night that there were not more speeders among them.
So to reply to your comment, that is how a photograph would stop it, and it really did happen.
How?
Your analogy proves nothing. If only two speeding tickets were given out, we don't know whether there were any more speeders. Maybe there were, but we have no way of knowing (and taking the right to drive away from a random, yet relatively powerless, group of people is goign to solve nothing). Technically, since a ticket is just an accusation, we don't know if there were any speeders--we just know that an officer said that there were.
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, incidentally, has conceded in a lawsuit that it knows of no instances of in-person voter fraud, and that the new voter ID law there is not likely to prevent any in-person fraud in the November 2012 election.
Freudian slip.
"Ritchie and other activists are concerned"
Pity MinnPost propaganda isn't admissible evidence. You've inadvertently admitted the Senate State Government Innovation and Veterans Committee has a valid complaint.
Not that any reasonable person had any doubts anyway.
Kiffmeyer
No doubt you protested at Kiffmeyer's ongoing, tenure long attempts to disenfranchise voters.
Right out of the Bachmann handbook
Sounds like another witch hunt to me. I'm assuming they've been reading the Bachmann handbook?
Parry and the usual
Cast of uninformed republican senators - go solve the sex scandal and leave the legal issues to those qualified. McGrath is hardly a source, just a rep puppet.
Function of government
"“That is definitely his duty,” DFL Sen. Barb Goodwin said. “It’s his duty to tell people what he thinks this law will do.”"
Wrong, Senator Goodwin. The Legislative branch writes the law, the Executive branch enforces the law, the Judicial branch interprets the law.
Fail.
Wrong again
No law by the legislature here krasnoff. Other state statutes apply to defining proposed amendments and yes, the supreme court can dismiss a proposed amendment on many grounds not just on constitutional grounds. Look up the laws for a change.
re: the law
The Legislative branch writes the law, the Executive branch enforces the law, the Judicial branch interprets the law.
I wish you and the rest of the leftists commenting at Minnpost were intellectually honest enough to admit the legislature, not Mr. Ritchie, writes the laws.
Tough to accept, Mr. Foreman, but there it is.
Tough to accept?
This is a proposed constitutional amendment, not a law. The procedures are not the same. You right wingers like to ignore the facts and the laws when they don't suit your purposes. Your use of the words "intellectualy honest" are laughable; this entire anti-voting amendment is dishonest and hardly intellectual.
The law has been written
The relevant law is Minn. Stat. sec. 204D.15, subd. 1, which states that the Secretary of State "shall provide an appropriate title for each question printed on the pink ballot [for constitutional amendments]. The title shall be approved by the attorney general, and shall consist of not more than one printed line above the question to which it refers."
The Legislature may pass the language of the question, but the title to be placed on the ballot is clearly delegated to the Secretary of State.
I'm proud of Mark Ritchie
I am very proud and grateful to have Ritchie as the Sec of State and I thank my luck to have him at such a crucial time. The Republican onslaught of bad legislation, backed up rabid supporters, can only stopped by the honest and true efforts of people like Ritchie. Thank you Mark Ritchie!
Speak for yourself
As someone who was denied the right to vote in 1988 due to a recent address change, I can tell you that as a caucasian male in his 20's (at the time) I was shocked that there was no recourse. But I had gotten off of a 12 hour shift at 7:30 p.m. and it took me 20 minute to drive to the polling place of my new residence. I was told that if I could find someone to vouch for my new address that I would be allowed to vote. I had ten minutes, and no cell phone. No one at the polling place told me that I could have gone back to my old precinct where I had lived and voted either, and I didn't know it at the time. I was able bodied, and of sound mind, and the system still failed me. And the VOTER ID legislation will only make it harder on the working class, the less educated, and the elderly. To say that no one is being disenfranchised by this Voter Id proposal, is to show complete ignorance of our society and sounds like someone who grew up in white suburban happy land filled with flowers and butterflies. Get out in the world and see what its really like before pushing such blind opinions about this dangerous idea.
To Ross
How long had it been since you moved before you changed the address on your ID? For a person passionite about voting and making it to the polling place why is it so impossible to make it to the DMV to have their lisence changed? I think Sears even does it some evenings too.
Reply to kyle thomas
Actually, several students were stopped from voting at the U of M. There is a problem.
Here's the problem with this amendment: it's unwritten. The boundaries are not clear. The writers claim they'll figure it all out later, including the cost.
kyle, traditionally Republicans are against giving power to government. Why on earth, then, would you hand over a blank check?
Michelle
What is the blank check? Checking ID to vote? What are you scared of? Why are you open to giving the government access to what you eat, how you heat/cool your home, what legal activities you do on legal busienss, but when it comes to voting you insist there be no verification.
Tell me Michelle, would you approve of a state issued Voter ID?
Enabling legislation
The "blank check" is the enabling legislation that will need to be written to specifically dictate exactly how this vaguely-worded amendment will actually be enacted into law. Right now, the GOP is basically saying "Don't worry. Everything will be fine. You can trust us . . . . . . "
Well, surprise! There are more than a few of us out here that just aren't comfortable with potentially handing the GOP that particular blank check.
And by the way, wherever did you get the idea that there is no verification when it comes to voting?
Reply to Pat on enabling legislation
It doesn't take a doctorate to understand the language. Want to vote? Have ID. You have two or four years to get one depending on which election you want to vote in. Why does that scare you so much? You can get an ID in less than ten days.
And to your soft point about giving a "blank check" to the GOP...why is it you are so ready to give the same "blank check" to the Democrats on health care, what kind of food we are allowed to eat, etc..remember your hero Nancy Pelosi? We need to vote for the healthcare bill so we can see what is in it.
Now to your point on verification, you must not have read my above post very well. At the local University I went to people were voting absentee and then again near campus on election day. The verification we need is a voucher, someone goes into the polling place with them and says they are who they say they are. Again, what are you afraid of? Having a state issued ID to vote? That is hard to follow? I am not as cynical as your fellow liberals I think that Minnesotans can understand that. Maybe you could head up some get out the ID drives, phone banks and bus trips?
The reason "election day registration" works
is because the government can regulate "voter registration fraud" just as effectively after the election as it can by forcing everyone to register in advance. Except that people who would otherwise vote except maybe they didn't register the ten days or two weeks in advance have one less excuse not to vote. People who are going to commit "registration fraud" can easily be found out and prosecuted, as they have been in the rare cases they occur, by screening the sheets after the election.
Requiring people to produce photo ID's is just a way to slow down voting and now force election judges to decide if the ID's comply. Of course, if this ever passes, people will be denied the right to vote if they try and are refused. An appeal right is little consolation after the election. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will rule this proposed amendment illegal and keep it off the ballot altogether. Save everyone a lot of hot air, time and money to waste on other things.
The GOP
They have all gone nuts. Bachmann, Parry, Senjem, Bensen you name one, they can't do anything but propose ELCA Legislation and call people names. That is all they done for the past two years. As a long time Republican, over 50 years, I am dropping them like a hot potato. In the upcoming election I intend to vote for whoever is opposing a GOP candidate. I can't thing off one thing they have done that is positive.
Everyone is well aware that the
MN republican party has an expertise in violating state campaign financing laws but that fact does not convince anyone that the party knows what the state campaign financing means or covers. Frankly one wonders if they have read the law. Call your expert sutton.