A pending deal to avoid a growing partisan dispute over conducting all vote-by-mail elections in Minnesota has fallen apart over … all-vote-by-mail elections.
A bipartisan group of House members along with DFL Secretary of State Steve Simon had reached an agreement last week on amendments to an elections bill, House File 3499, that sidestepped controversial issues for both parties — including voter ID, provisional balloting and conducting Minnesota’s statewide primary and general elections via vote-by-mail — but did include provisions for making elections safer amid COVID-19.
The agreement appropriated all the money that has come to the state via the federal Help America Vote Act, including $6.9 million that was included to address the impact of COVID-19, and $7.4 million appropriated to help with voting security in the wake of hacking attempts during the 2016 election.
Under the deal, the COVID-19 money, which was appropriated via the federal CARES Act, could be spent to open more polls, to provide for extra sanitation of voting places and to encourage more voters to use the state’s existing system of no-excuse absentee balloting, which requires a voter to sign-up before being mailed a ballot.
Not included, however, was the ability to use the federal money to shift the state to a comprehensive vote-by-mail system, for which each registered voter is automatically mailed a ballot, and something for which U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is seeking additional money in future federal COVID-19 response bills.
The issue has recently become a battleground between Democrats and Republicans nationally and in Minnesota, with Democrats seeing it as the best way to assure safe elections if coronavirus remains a threat and Republicans saying it is prone to voter fraud and claiming it is simply a way to help Democrats win elections.
Gov. Tim Walz weighed in last week, warning that the type of problems Wisconsin experienced by holding a primary during a stay at home order should not happen in Minnesota.
This can’t happen in Minnesota, and if we expand vote by mail, it won’t. In Minnesota, we consistently lead the nation in voter turnout – let’s not let COVID-19 change that. #StayHomeMN https://t.co/F3JANEgbwd
— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) April 23, 2020
Other key provisions of the compromise allow minor parties to electronically collect signatures to place candidates on the ballot; allow candidate declarations to be done online; and permit local election officials to move polling places that are currently in vulnerable locations, such as long-term care facilities or schools.
The compromise bill also gives local officials two weeks before elections to start processing what might be a large increase in the use of no-excuses absentee voting from those leery of going to polling places in the fall. Some analysts have estimated that if voters are given more information — and if signing-up is made easier — the percentage of mailed votes could grow from around a quarter of Minnesota voters to more than half.
The group that advocates on behalf of the state’s county governments, the Association of Minnesota Counties, supports the compromise bill. “Without reasonable and practical changes to election law, Minnesotans may be put in an uncomfortable position of choosing between their own personal health and their fundamental right to vote, should the coronavirus health impacts continue through the election season,” the group wrote in a letter to lawmakers.
While agreement among Republicans and Democrats on the House State Government Finance subcommittee didn’t guarantee that the GOPers who control the state Senate would go along with the bill, having the endorsement of key House Republicans was important in dispelling accusations that the bill was a partisan effort.
But that arrangement was disrupted last week when House Republican negotiators were told that while moving Minnesota to all vote-by-mail wouldn’t be part of the compromise bill, House DFLers would be pushing for a floor vote on the issue in a separate bill, which would be placed in an omnibus elections bill, HF 1603.
In response, Rep. Jim Nash, R-Waconia, complained last week that after the deal had been reached, he was told by Committee Chair Michael Nelson, DFL-Brooklyn Park, that DFL leadership also wanted a vote-by-mail bill. Though the two measures would move separately, Nash said he feared the vote-by-mail bill would become the default election bill for the session. “I’m disappointed that people who weren’t involved in the negotiations could snap their fingers and change absolutely everything,” Nash said.
He was referencing House DFL leadership, including House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler of Golden Valley, and said the move would cause him to vote “no” on a bill he had helped draft.
Nash said he supports broadening the use of existing no-excuse absentee voting, but like many Republicans he does not support all vote-by-mail, saying he thinks it opens elections up to fraud.
Secretary of State Steve Simon, who had helped negotiate the compromise, encouraged GOP members of the committee not to be distracted by what he termed the “shiny object” — the separate all vote-by-mail bill. “This compromise is not everything that I wanted,” Simon said. “It is far short of what I wanted, and I continue to think the safest way to conduct an election in a pandemic is to do the full, automatic, vote-by-mail.”
But he also knows that wouldn’t pass the Legislature due to GOP objections, so he wants the negotiated bill “to give Minnesotans some comfort at a time of pandemic.”
Despite the bipartisan aspect of the deal falling apart, the bill itself passed out of the subcommittee, though on a party-line vote, and the same committee will also take up the vote-by-mail bill Monday. Both bills are headed toward the full Ways and Means Committee Wednesday and eventual floor votes.
Rep. Raymond Dehn, the Minneapolis DFLer who is chair of the House Elections subcommittee, said he expects the compromise bill will likely pass the House. And since the GOP-controlled Senate dislikes vote-by-mail, that issue will probably die, leaving the compromise bill alive.
The compromise legislation is probably the best that either party can hope to get passed, he said. And while he thinks staffing and operating polling places will be difficult come fall, reducing the numbers of in-person voters is a worthy goal. “If there’s a way we could get to 60 percent (absentee voting),” Dehn said, “we reduce the number of people in the polls, which might make it manageable.”
“I and the House leadership and many local election officials think the best thing to do would be all vote-by-mail,” Dehn said. “But the GOP is saying ‘No, no way can we support that.’”
Winkler echoed Dehn’s assessment. “Vote-by-mail is the better way to do things and we would hold out hope of getting that in final session negotiations, but the backup is what I would describe as ‘make do,’ ” Winkler said. “We need options.”
And even if it’s unlikely to emerge from end-of-session deal-making due to GOP objections, said Winkler, DFLers think it’s still worth pursuing: “We don’t know what all will be in play as we get closer to May 19. It would be foolish to give up without trying.”
Last year, a re-vote was called in North Carolina after it was found that the winning candidate had engaged in vote harvesting, which is perfectly legal, and widely used in California.
For people that care about the security of our franchise, that is only one of the many troubling aspects of vote-by-mail that would have to be worked out before it is even seriously considered.
Rushing past the caution tape makes a guy have doubts about the sincerity of the DFL
First of all, Republican Mark Harris was never certified as the winner in the North Carolina race. He didn’t even run as a candidate in the second vote, as his campaign had close ties to the man behind the ballot scandal.
Minnesota already has strict rules on who can collect ballots, This is called ‘agent delivery,’ and can only be used under a specific set of circumstances. It was not been a problem here, and I doubt it would be under an all-mail system.
” as his campaign had close ties to the man behind the ballot scandal. ”
That’s the issue, right there. in NC, it’s a “ballot scandal”, in California it’s business as usual. We need uniformity. It’s either legal, or it’s not.
Minnesota already allows for on demand absentee balloting. Why not simply use it? What is the benefit of adding yet another, redundant alternative unless the aim is to muddy the waters?
You ask what the point is of using mail balloting when no-excuse absentee voting is already available. There are two points: efficiency and effectiveness.
Regarding efficiency, mail balloting eliminates the need for local officials to process so many absentee voting applications. The absentee voting application is appropriate for voters who are genuinely absent, that is, they need to have their ballot sent somewhere other than their registered address. It provides a way for them to indicate the correct mailing address to use. In an election where most voters are expected to vote in person, the application also is a reasonable wait to identify the minority who are choosing to vote by mail. However, in an election where the majority are expected to vote my mail, it becomes more efficient to use batch mailing processes to send ballots to all registered voters rather than processing applications individually.
If efficiency were simply a matter of saving money, then we might reasonably discuss whether this was money spent for a good cause. Spending money to conduct elections in a way that inspires broad confidence is nothing unusual. The problem is, the inefficiency of handling individual absentee voting applications could cause the system to break down, not just cost more money. Although the system already in place can handle an application from *any* voter, it cannot handle applications from *every* voter. The analogy I use is the electrical outlets in my home. I can plug an appliance into *any* outlet, but if I try plugging appliances into *every* outlet the breakers trip. That’s what happened in Wisconsin: so many voters applied for absentee voting that the processes in place for dealing which such applications became overloaded. We can hope that Minnesota’s local elections offices will scale up their processes in the few months remaining, but this isn’t easy. They are are competing with elections officials all over the nation for acquisition of the necessary equipment and outsourcing contractors. If the scramble for personal protective equipment has taught us anything, it’s that sometimes even all the money in the world won’t make procurement happen.
Regarding effectiveness, we need to keep in mind that the goal is a society-wide public health goal of trying to minimize the reliance on in-person voting. This *is* deeply personal for people like me who ordinarily spend a long day serving voters at polling places. But it is also broader than personal: any big gathering point is going to spread the virus to people who then go off into households and workplaces and spread it further. So we really *all* have an interest in minimizing the use of in-person voting. This is entirely different from the ordinary absentee voting situation, where the point is to meet the individual voter’s desire for an alternative voting mechanism. In that more normal circumstance, the rest of us don’t have a stake in whether the voter is choosing to vote absentee or in-person.
Looking again to Wisconsin as an example, they too have a no-excuse absentee voting option. And despite the overloading problems I mentioned earlier, an utterly unprecedented number of voters availed themselves of it: about 70%. But that still left the other 30%, who were the ones we all saw news photos of standing in long lines. Making absentee voting available as an option, but still requiring the extra step of applying in advance, doesn’t divert as many voters as mail balloting does: it isn’t as effective at serving that goal. You are welcome to think the voters who don’t aplpy, or don’t apply early enough, are lazy or stupid or whatever. It really doesn’t matter from a public-health perspective. Their reasons–good or bad—for not applying aren’t relevant. The relevant question is how many of them there are. And the answer is too many to leave for in-person voting in a pandemic.
Returning to your original concern about ballot harvesting, I’ll point out that is no different for no-excuse absentee voting than for mail balloting. So although it is a concern that needs to be addressed, it isn’t a reason for choosing between these two versions of voting by mail.
I’ve also summarized the differences between mail balloting and absentee voting here: https://medium.com/@max.hailperin/what-is-the-difference-between-mail-balloting-and-absentee-voting-b915bcd82f81?source=friends_link&sk=f70f38c0e2c46f2d8733153bd960dfe4
If there have been criticisms about the efficiency and effectiveness of absentee balloting, I haven’t seen them.
And since when did efficiency and effectiveness trump security and trustworthiness when it comes to our franchise?
The thing is, true or not, these mounting schemes leave many to conclude the left is interested in nothing more than putting ballots in the hands of as many uninformed people as possible. Voting is the most important thing Americans do. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect people to put in some small measure of effort to make use of it, or of our election officials to put in an effort the ensure our elections are secure.
When you say “If there have been criticisms about the efficiency and effectiveness of absentee balloting, I haven’t seen them,” I have to assume you mean prior to reading what I wrote. Perhaps unlike me, you didn’t view the legislative hearings on this topic. The videos of those are online, but they are rather slow viewing. It might be quicker and easier to just give your local nonpartisan election administrator a call—in most counties, that’s called the County Auditor, although there are some variants like a combined Auditor-Treasurer. The advantage to calling them is that not only would they give you authoritative, local information on the relative merits of mail balloting versus absentee voting, they could also tell you of their existing experience with mail balloting—because in most counties, it already is in use in some areas. Finding out the truth this way would also spare you needing to use phrases like “true or not.” And as a bonus, you could ask them about your idea that “It doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect … our election officials to put in an effort [to] ensure our elections are secure.” I imagine your local election official would be quite professional about this and rather than understandably taking offense would explain to you just how hard they do work and will work.
As to your question “since when did efficiency and effectiveness trump security and trustworthiness,” I would simply point out that nobody—myself included—said they did. You seem to be debating a straw man. Indeed, you mostly are debating your own imagination, which is what you are doing when you speculate about what “the left is interested in nothing more than.”
I vote to have two separate bills. One concerning this year’s election and one for the future, when there can be more discussion to hash out differences for a long-term election process. I haven’t seen any details regarding the 100% vote by mail process. It seems to me there are too many opportunities for missed votes and unqualified votes. Who gets the mailings? How is returned mail managed? How do we confirm voter eligibility? How are duplicate votes detected?
Good questions, all. Questions the DFL is evidently not interested in answering.
There is no 100% vote by mail process; even with mail balloting, there is always an in-person option. Mail balloting is already in state law and used in portions of most counties; the bill currently in the House would extend its use to other areas for this year only. Your local County Auditor could fill you in on the details; however, I’ll try to answer your questions here.
Q: Who gets the mailings?
A: Registered voters.
Q: How is returned mail handled?
A: The elections office marks the registration as challenged. Before the voter can vote, they have to re-verify their residence.
Q: How do we confirm voter eligibility?
A: All the same tests of voter eligibility are used as with in-person or absentee voting. Also, as with absentee voting, the voter submits their Minnesota Driver’s License or ID number, or the last 4 digits of their Social Security Number, signs the envelope, and has it witnessed by another registered voter or notary public.
Q: How are duplicate votes detected?
A: Before the envelope with the identifying information on it is opened, the elections office looks up the voter in the Statewide Voter Registration System (SVRS) to see if they are shown as already having voted. If so, the envelope is marked as rejected for that reason and is set aside unopened. Only if the voter is shown as eligible and not already voted is the envelope marked accepted and the inner secrecy envelope removed. The SVRS is update to show the vote as accepted. All the accepted secrecy envelopes then have their ballots removed and counted.
What happens to ballots mailed to registered voters who no longer reside at their last address? Many voters move between elections and wait until Election Day to update their registration. Does the Post Office see that the addressee is no longer living there and return the ballot? I occasionally receive mail for previous residents at my address. I don’t know that the Post Office cares whose name is an the label and will deliver it to the address regardless.
The Post Office is supposed to only deliver the ballot if the name matches that on the mailbox, but they don’t achieve this goal 100% of the time. However, when a ballot does slip through and get delivered to a new occupant, there isn’t much that new occupant can do with it. To get the ballot counted, they’d need to know the previous resident’s Minnesota driver’s license or ID number, or the last 4 digits of their Social Security Number, to match the one that is on record. (They’d also need to sign and get a witness to sign.) So completely aside from the deterrent of it being a felony, at a pure feasibility level there’s a significant barrier. And that’s all for the sake of one extra vote. Back to your point that people often don’t update their registration, that’s absolutely true. However, the Secretary of State’s office has for the last few years benefited from a better tool that allows them to catch more of these changes of address on their own, updating the records without waiting for the voter. That’s thanks to membership in the multi-state Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) consortium, which in addition to the voter registrations records from the members states pulls in data from the drivers license agencies and from the USPS’s change-of-address service.
I wrote to every member of the House State Finance Committee asking that they consider a variety of improvements, as a one-time-only, consideration due to COVID-19. I listened/observed the committee meetings two weeks in a row and was dismayed that the bi-partisan negotiations had been submarined by another bill. The Senate would not consider a vote by mail bill anyway, so it seems like a waste of time and derailed the negotiations that had taken place. NO ONE should be forced to choose between their health and voting. I don’t care what party you belong to. As an election judge, I’m still grappling with the decision to work or not. Can we please get beyond parties and think about the safety of Minnesotans and work to make it safe for everyone? There are things that can be done to expand current law (expand the number of days in advance you can request a ballot, the time on the backend to count votes, let election officials change polling locations as needed. MN has at least 44 that are currently located in nursing homes/assisted living etc. and current law would not allow them to substitute a different location etc.
I say this to both parties, pull it together people for the sake of all MN citizens!
The DFL should see this as a multi- year project and the Repubs should fear exactly that. Encourage the public to take advantage of vote-by-mail this election. When nothing untoward occurs with a larger than normal use of mailed ballots, the Repubs won’t be able to use fear of widespread misconduct as an excuse to object to total vote-by-mail during the next legislative session.
A few years ago when our township went to mail in ballots, or drive 23 miles to vote at the courthouse, I resisted. I felt taking children with you to the township hall was a good example in citizenship. It also brought neighbors out. With our world now, it makes sense.
I have read a lot about this issue both for and against.
You need to sign the ballot, have a witness, and put your ballot inside one envelope and then in the mailing envelope. I don’t understand the fear of stolen ballots? If you are a registered voter, you get one ballot.
I hope good sense and not paranoia is the outcome for our state, and for our nation.
“The things they had in there were crazy,” Trump said. “They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.“
The above quote is from a Minnpost article by Eric Black. It should be required to be part of any article about the 2020 election and Republican efforts to suppress the vote in 2020.
While I can accept the hypothesis that election fraud is a concern of Republicans, there is no evidence that it has been an election deciding issue, except when deployed by Republicans. Idaho, an exceedingly Republican state has used vote by mail for years, with no evidence of in creased fraud. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that Republicans real concern is clearly stated in the Trump quote.
Senator Mary Kiffmeyer and Senator Paul Gazelka are the ones who will decide whether Minnesota voters and potential election judges have to chose to take an unnecessary risk to exercise their right to vote. As n Wisconsin, the responsibility for the avoidable deaths will be on Republican dealers of death.
As an election judge who has used absentee voting when I have worked elections outside my home precinct, I really wish the “voter fraud” claims of Republicans were followed up with questions as to how? Anyone who has actually participated in absentee voting can tell you all of the safeguards in place to prevent fraud. How exactly do these legislators think those safeguards can be overcome? And if they cannot articulate that, can we please dismiss those claims as nonsense?
Given how easy absentee voting is, I don’t see why we should mail ballots to everyone whether they have requested one or not. Today, a voter has to take a little effort to request an “AB” or go to the polling place and I don’t think that is such a bad thing.
There are two answers to the question of why mail balloting may be preferable to absentee voting, and neither has to do with the extra effort required for voters. One is to prevent the elections offices from being overloaded with processing absentee voting applications if there is a greatly increased number of applicants—which seems predictable. The whole point of an absentee voting application is to allow for exceptional treatment of individuals, in particular sending their ballot to a location of their choice, not necessarily their registered address. But to apply that to the vast majority of voters who are at their usual address just makes for a ton of extra clerical work at the elections office. Also, with the applications drifting in over time—many at the last minute—the ballots can’t be sent out in one efficient bulk mailing outsourced to a mailing service provider. If these efficiency considerations just impacted how much funding the elections offices in the various counties needed, perhaps there might be considerations that would make spending more money worthwhile. However, the bigger concern is that the processing may simply crumple under the load. Even with funding and a few months lead time, the elections officials may not be able to scale up their capacity. If not, we could wind up with a lot of voters not getting the ballots they requested—or getting them so late they can’t realistically return them. (This happened in Wisconsin.) All of that is answer one. Answer two concerns the public-health consequences. Although requesting absentee voting only requires a little effort, some voters won’t put that effort in, or will do so too late to be successful. It doesn’t really matter what you or I think of these people—whether they are lazy, or stupid, or what. What matters is that there are a significant number of them. And they are then going to show up to vote in person. From a public-health standpoint, we all have a stake in trying to prevent that from happening. If what it takes to get them to vote by mail rather than in person is to mail them a ballot, then that’s just reality. I’m far from the oldest or sickest election judge in my precinct, and even I don’t want to be confronted with a whole bunch of in-person voters. I’m not concerned with whether they put in a little effort or not. I’m concerned with keeping them and their droplets away from me.