On Thursday, April 19, the Minnesota Senate passed a partisan elections policy bill that adds costly burdens to local governments, reduces community representation in local elections, and fails to deliver integrity and transparency to Minnesota’s elections.

Among the more concerning changes in the bill is a change that allows school boards to fill vacancies with an appointment for as long as two years. This change prevents voters from choosing their elected school board representatives and significantly reduces public input in the electoral process.

The legislation also changes the voter registration process for homeless Minnesotans. If enacted, they can simply mark a place on a map where they generally reside and cast their vote for that precinct without any accountability or verification process. Currently, any voter who registers before election day must verify their physical address.

“The Democrats’ partisan elections bill fails to honor Minnesota’s long tradition of bipartisan election law changes,” Senator Cal Bahr (R-East Bethel), a member of the Senate Elections Committee, said. “We should be passing election policies that benefit all Minnesota voters, not just benefit one side of the aisle. Unfortunately, this bill does nothing to increase transparency or integrity of Minnesota elections.”

Other concerning provisions of the elections policy bill include:

• Requiring any county or municipality that administers elections to transition to a ‘.gov’ website.
• Making complex campaign finance changes that are hard to enforce, difficult to understand, and risk limiting public engagement in elections.

Senate Republicans offered several amendments to protect the integrity of election results and increase participation. Among them was an amendment offered by Sen. Bahr to require municipal and school board elections be held in general election years to increase voter participation. This change would apply to all Minnesota schools and cities, other than the first class.

“We want as much voter participation as possible, and this amendment sought to increase voter turnout for our municipal and school board elections. By changing the election dates of our schools and cities to even years, we would align with the General Election when voter turnout is much greater,” Sen. Bahr shared.

Additionally, an amendment was offered to establish provisional ballots for Minnesota voters who register on Election Day. Provisional ballots are used in 47 other states to ensure voters who register on Election Day are validated the same way as a voter who registers prior to the election, and before counting their vote in the final election results.

Other amendments offered by Senate Republicans include:

• Prohibiting political parties from collecting or soliciting financial contributions during the legislative session to prevent special interests from buying influence.
• Preventing non-governmental groups from paying for election-related expenses through so-called, “Zuckerbucks” to keep elections free of outside influence.
• Banning political spending by organizations that receive state funding to ensure tax dollars are being spent responsibly and not used in a pay-to-play scheme.

The amendments were defeated along party lines.