Election watchdogs release report on 2008 election and Coleman-Franken recount

Is Minnesota’s election process faulty?

Not at all, according to a Minnesota election watchdog group that monitored last winter’s recount. In fact the group, Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota (CEIMN), reported last week that the election process went smoothly.

The CEIMN report — “Eyes on the Vote Count: Non-partisan Observer Reports of Minnesota’s 2008 Audit and Recount” — is available at www.ceimn.org.

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Reforms to Minnesota's ballot rules pushed back to next year

...Here's how Ritchie described the situation: "The procedure for sending out 300,000 absentee ballots to 4,000 polling places to be processed by 30,000 mostly volunteer election officials at the end of the day after 3 million voters walked through the door — when you say it out loud, that's crazy."

After the election, Ritchie solicited suggestions for repairs from city, county and township election officials. Their ideas were incorporated in the Legislature's major election reform bill of the session. 

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Editorial: Election bills fell to partisan 'gotcha'

Plenty of Minnesotans will follow today's oral arguments with considerable impatience and frustration. They'll wonder why several thousand of the last election's 290,000 absentee ballots landed in legal limbo. They'll ask whether a surer system could be devised to make absentee ballots less prone to administrative errors and legal second-guessing.

Several county elections officials on the receiving end of those questions answered them at a Humphrey Institute conference last week, with abundant frustration of their own. Yes, they said, we know how to improve absentee balloting to minimize this problem in the future. We worked persistently with both parties in the Legislature this year to get a reasonable remedy through the House and Senate. We want to move the processing of absentee ballots out of precincts and into county offices, to improve uniformity and relieve pressure on already busy election judges.

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Despite Coleman-Franken fallout, Pawlenty scotched election reform

If vetoes are like slapshot goals in hockey, then Gov. Tim Pawlenty scored an election-reform hat trick last week. After vetoing motor-voter and felon-notification, he scotched the state Legislature’s big omnibus elections bill.

The measure included provisions drawn from at least eight separate bills, from an earlier primary date to absentee-ballot streamlining. While the bill was  not everything reformers had sought — no early voting, for instance — it would have made dozens of improvements to the current system.

All fell to Pawlenty’s veto pen because the bill didn’t meet Republicans’ demand for new photo-ID requirements.

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It's time for a full report on election issues

We hope Gov. Tim Pawlenty's veto of an elections bill on Friday will be the beginning, not the end, of a full review of Minnesota's election law and the lessons of the U.S. Senate recount fight.

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First, reform voter registration

If the Great Election Recount of 2008-09 has proven anything, it is that the very legitimacy of our democracy rests on the integrity of our voting system.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty had an opportunity to sign into law several crucial election improvements that would have eliminated many of the sources of error and confusion we’ve witnessed in the U.S. Senate election recount. Yet the governor chose on Thursday to veto House File 1053, which would have authorized a critical improvement in our voter registration system.

Modernizing and automating voter registration is crucial. A national survey last fall found that more election problems resulted from voter registration mistakes than from any other cause.

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Minnesota House approves no-excuse early voting bill

Minnesotans could vote before Election Day without an excuse, and absentee ballots would be counted more reliably under a bill passed Thursday by the House.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley, said it was drafted to correct flaws in the state voting system that became apparent during the still-undecided U.S. Senate election between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken. He said the measure should ensure that every vote is counted.

No-excuse early voting is a "matter of convenience for voters who have increasingly busy lives," said Rep. Will Morgan, DFL-Burnsville.

The change would allow voters to show up at their city halls or courthouses four to 15 days before an election and vote "exactly like they would on Election Day," Morgan said.

The early voting would be faster and simpler than voting by absentee ballot, which requires completing complicated paperwork. Thirty-two other states allow no-excuse early voting.

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House begins debate on changes to election rules

The Minnesota House of Representatives began debating Wednesday night a bill authored by Sen. Katie Sieben, DFL-Cottage Grove, that would allow early voting, move primary elections to June and change the way absentee ballots are handled.

“Because of the Senate recount and the closeness of the election there was clarity about some aspects of Minnesota statute that I think should be updated or changed,” Sieben said. “These are provisions that aren’t necessarily controversial.”

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Early-voting bill advances at Capitol

Minnesotans are a step closer to being able to vote early without the hurdles of the state's beleaguered absentee-ballot system.

The House approved a bill today that would broadly overhaul the state's elections law, an effort that was given momentum by voting flaws uncovered by the long battle over the still-unresolved U.S. Senate race.

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Mankato Free Press: Election law can be improved

The Mankato Free Press editorial board wrote an editorial in favor of election reform. 

A voting and election reform proposal moving through the Legislature offers a lot of common sense, low-cost ways to improve the efficiency of vote counting and voting itself in Minnesota.

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