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Feb 11, 2009 10:10 pm US/Central
Election Official Proposes Change To Minn. Laws
ST. PAUL (AP) ―
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Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said Wednesday that updating Minnesota's voter registration database and allowing people to vote early without an excuse will make elections run more smoothly.
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Minnesota's top election official on Wednesday proposed dozens of changes to state law after an unsettled Senate race put a microscope on everything from absentee balloting to the recount process.
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie wants to automatically update Minnesota's voter registration database, allow people to vote early without an excuse and give citizens the option to register to vote or check the status of their registration or absentee ballot online.
He also announced several proposed changes to the way Minnesota handles recounts. Some of those changes would likely have made a difference in the Senate recount, the results of which are now being challenged in court by Republican Norm Coleman.
"I feel like the recount has not only given us a lot of information, but it's also given us momentum to make some changes," Ritchie said during a news conference.
In future recounts, Ritchie wants to define an identifying mark on a ballot as a name, signature or ID number. Thousands of ballots were challenged for funny write-in names or stray marks in the Senate recount, making the state canvassing board's task of examining the ballots more time-consuming.
Ritchie would also like the Legislature to require candidate representatives that challenge ballots to be Minnesota residents and attend a training session. And he said the vote margin triggering a recount should be smaller -- 0.25 percent instead of 0.5 percent. That change wouldn't have affected the Senate recount.
Adjustments also need to be made to the absentee voting process to avoid the problem of rejected absentee ballots, Ritchie said. A panel of judges is reviewing up to 4,700 rejected absentee ballots as part of Coleman's legal challenge of the Senate recount, which put Democrat Al Franken ahead by 225 votes.
One change would be using ID numbers to verify regular absentee voters rather than having election officials match signatures, Ritchie said. As seen in the Senate race, an unmatching signature with an absentee ballot has been one of the more common reasons for it to be rejected.
To help officials and voters have a smoother election process, Ritchie said he'd like to see early voting be expanded in most areas and a vote-by-mail-only system be expanded in very rural areas. Later Wednesday, a Senate subcommittee recommended a bill allowing vote-by-mail for communities that have fewer than 1,000 registered voters.
Ritchie said for other areas, allowing people to vote early in multiple locations without having to fill out an absentee ballot would bring Minnesota up to speed on what other states are doing. Currently state law says voters must have an excuse to vote early.
But more people are taking advantage of the state's absentee voting system than ever before, partly for the convenience, Ritchie said. "We live differently now," he said.
Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, said he's happy Ritchie is looking at improving the state's absentee ballot system. But Emmer said he doesn't see how giving voters a chance to vote early without an excuse will improve things. "To open it up without any excuse starts to again cut at the integrity of the system," he said.
Emmer and some of his Republican colleagues are pushing a bill that would require voters to show photo ID before casting a ballot.
Ritchie said that requirement would disenfranchise many voters, especially the elderly, who might not have current IDs. Instead, he said the system's integrity and security can be improved if people getting driver's licenses or state ID cards are automatically registered to vote unless they opt out.
His recommendation came the same day the nonprofit Heartland Democracy came out with a report recommending that states register voters automatically using data from driver's licenses, tax returns and state benefit statements.
Each of Ritchie's proposals are expected to be introduced in the Legislature during the upcoming weeks. While he acknowledged that lawmakers will be focused on the state's budget deficit, Ritchie said many of his proposals could get funding from the federal Help America Vote Act.
(© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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