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Jeffrey Maas

St. Paul, MN
Commenter for
4 years 27 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 06/15/12 at 12:42 pm in response to Legislative commission opts for unprecedented approach to defend Photo ID amendment

I'll make no claim to being a constitutional scholar (especially as regards state constitutions), but I am curious as to the source of your claim that the MN SOS, as a member of the Executive Branch, is " constitutionally bound to uphold, defend & implement legislative bills". Here's a link to the Minnesota State Constitution and I see none of that "uphold and defend" language in it. In fact, the language on executive branch duties generally and the SOS duties in particular, is quite...

Posted on 02/24/12 at 12:36 am in response to Last year's redistricting of St. Paul's wards didn't change much

Just a friendly note to MinnPost's readers in the saintly city that the St. Paul Charter Commission will be holding two public hearings on possible changes to last year's redistricting plan, now that the courts have issued the statewide maps. The Charter Commission encourages all of the citizens of St. Paul to participate in the hearings by attending, or by sending comments to the Commission electronically or in writing.

The first hearing will be held this coming Monday, Feb. 27th, at...

Posted on 02/20/12 at 06:55 pm in response to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie offers Voter ID alternative: electronic poll books

... apparently on Mr. Krasnoff, who (understandably) fails to make the crucial distinction here between the registration verification process and the ballot casting process. Electronic poll books have nothing to do with traceable, verifiable ballots, except that both are systems that are used (or at least could be used) during an election. Since this distinction seems unclear to at least one MinnPost reader, I will elaborate.

Poll books are what get used to sign voters in before they...

Posted on 02/21/12 at 05:00 pm in response to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie offers Voter ID alternative: electronic poll books

Simply adding pictures wouldn't necessitate the creation of another database. Instead what would happen is that new data fields would be added in the current database, the SVRS (Statewide Voter Registration System). Maybe that's a fine distinction to persons who lack an IT background, but as with your conflation of registration processes and ballot casting processes, the actual differences are significant in terms of cost, time and effort. Or perhaps you were assuming that using electronic...

Posted on 02/21/12 at 05:27 pm in response to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie offers Voter ID alternative: electronic poll books

Have you ever worked an election before, Mr. Krasnoff? Ballots don't have a trackable, traceable numbering system on them. The secret ballot is one of the most sacrosanct principles of our election system. The only time there's any sort of numbering done on ballots is when a ballot needs to be duplicated. And duplication is only done in cases where the ballot counting scanner is rejecting a ballot for very particular reasons (such as misprinted timing marks, excessive folding of absentee...

Posted on 02/22/12 at 05:05 pm in response to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie offers Voter ID alternative: electronic poll books

If I'm reading your comment above correctly, Mr. Tester, you're suggesting that a driver's license -- the gold standard by which we currently register the vast, vast majority of people to vote in our state -- would no longer be an acceptable form of ID for registering and voting if the amendment gets passed?? I've watched the debates at the capitol, I've read the various bills and the amendment, but I've never heard anyone attached to the legislation say that they wanted to replace DL's and...

Posted on 02/22/12 at 05:27 pm in response to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie offers Voter ID alternative: electronic poll books

... that absentee ballots aren't verified?

Or, as regards the voters in the database you're purportedly concerned about, do you really believe that the SVRS (Statewide Voter Registration System -- the voter reg database) doesn't do a number of checks of the information submitted by a voter (who is actually just an applicant at that stage, really) before that person is placed, unflagged, in the registration rolls??

Furthermore, do you actually believe that our laws somehow don...

Posted on 08/27/10 at 10:11 am in response to Horner's advice to fairgoers on how to govern, how to pee

Went to the Fair on the first night to see the Pines playing the Heritage at Sundown stage and got a good laugh afterward from the Horner ad, which indeed was positioned directly over my urinal trough. I wish more of those sorts of ads were half as clever.

PS - Highly recommend The Pines to people. They play again tonight, Friday, Aug. 27, same location, so check them out and the Horner ad!

Posted on 11/14/08 at 04:11 pm in response to Minnesota elections are already a national leader, but could they be better?

Kelly, I agree that Mr. Cilek's statement is hyperbole and perhaps even an insult to the clear choice of the majority of Minneapolis' voters. But based on my own interactions with MVA, I'd say that you are also being unfair to them by painting them as a bunch of Republicans with a mission that is so easily boiled down to getting partisan primaries and disenfranchising voters.

I've sat through open meetings in St. Paul in which proponents have made compelling arguments for IRV and...

Posted on 11/14/08 at 12:42 am in response to The Coleman-Franken Recount: See you in court sooner – and later

I'm currently taking Prof. Schultz's extremely timely and excellent Election Law class at Hamline University School of Law and I have to add that there is another lawsuit layer we discussed today in class related to Franken's request for the list of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected: individual (or class-action, more likely) suit(s) by the affected absentee voters whose votes weren't counted. Which candidate such a suit might favor, if any, I don't know. But it would seem that...