Editorial Roundup: Minnesota

By The Associated Press The Associated Press

Minneapolis Star Tribune. April 4, 2024.

Editorial: No hostility to voting in Minnesota, please

Legislature should pass Voting Rights Act to counteract efforts to suppress participation.

Minnesota is known for its relatively high voter participation rates and laws that seek to provide more, not less, opportunity for citizens to cast ballots.

Last year, Minnesota legislators wisely approved changing state law to allow the formerly incarcerated to vote. But this year, a legal challenge to that change highlights why it’s important to protect voting rights on a number of fronts.

With that goal in mind, the Legislature should approve the proposed Minnesota Voting Rights Act this session to assure equal access and live up to the intent of the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act.

Congress approved the federal act in part to prohibit racial discrimination in voting. However, in November 2023 the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that only the United States attorney general can enforce Section 2 of the act that prohibits states from setting standards that deny or limit any citizen’s right to vote based on their race or color.

The author of the House bill, Rep. Emma Greenman, DFL-Minneapolis, said the measure would “codify and strengthen protections against suppressing or diluting” the votes of people of color and others who have historically faced discriminatory voting practices.

Greenman told an editorial writer that after the Appeals Court decision, Minnesota urgently needs rules that can “protect and expand our multiracial democracy so that everyone has access to the right to vote.” As an attorney with a background in voting rights law, she said that the legislation is especially needed at a time when federal courts are “increasingly hostile to voting rights.”

Minnesota is among several states — including Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey and Florida — that are considering taking similar action this year. Generally, state voting rules vary widely. In Maine, Vermont and the District of Columbia, felons can vote even while incarcerated. In more than 20 states, felons regain the right immediately upon release, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Minnesota’s top election official, Secretary of State Steve Simon, has voiced his support for the proposed state Voting Rights Act.

“If we can no longer count on the federal Voting Rights Act to allow private citizens to protect their own voting rights, then we need a Minnesota Voting Rights Act to fill the gap,” Simon said in legislative testimony last week. “And that’s what this bill does. It fills the gap by guaranteeing a day in court for Minnesota voters to defend their voting rights against laws or policies that they believe discriminate against them.”

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Supreme Court heard arguments this week against the changes passed last year to allow the formerly incarcerated to vote. That change made an estimated 57,000 to 66,000 people eligible to vote in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Voters Alliance asked the court to reinstate its challenge to the year-old law. An attorney for the nonprofit Alliance told justices that the Legislature exceeded its authority when it passed the law last year without restoring other civil rights to released inmates. He argued that voting rights can only be restored along with a package of other civil rights (such as holding elected office and serving on a jury), not independently. The case was expedited to the court, and justices say a decision will come soon — in time for voting that will begin in June.

The Star Tribune Editorial Board has previously voiced its support for extending voting rights to those who have served their time. Restoring those rights is part of the process of rehabilitation, reintegrating former lawbreakers into the community and helping them to become productive citizens.

The Minnesota Voting Rights Act would provide broader support for voting rights in the state — protecting those citizens who too often face discrimination and suppression tactics — and it also should be approved by the Legislature.

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Mankato Free Press. April 3, 2024.

Editorial: Voting rights: Minnesota should protect voters federal courts failed

Only in a federal court, it seems, is a voter’s right to sue for discriminatory system of voting somehow not found in the Voting Rights Act.

That’s the ruling a panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals proffered last year saying only the government can sue for voting discrimination laws in a bit of pretzel logic that undercuts the overall principal of government by the consent of the governed. Fortunately, state governments, including Minnesota, are developing their own Voting Rights Acts that would override the 8th Circuit’s ruling, which now applies to states in the district from Minnesota to Arkansas, including neighbors Iowa and the Dakotas.

Taking away rights seems to be the mantra of a series of federal court rulings that include the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating abortion rights. The federal courts seem more and more partisan as many judges have been appointed by ex-President Donald Trump, as was the 2-1 majority in the Arkansas case. Judge Steven Colloton, appointed by President George W. Bush, conceded as much and wrote in a dissenting opinion that “the mistakes in this case are almost entirely judge-driven.”

Judge Davis R. Stras of Minnesota, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority opinion in the Arkansas case, which was rejected for appeal by the full 8th Circuit. He dismissed years of precedent governing the law. He said, in essence, that precedent doesn’t matter as rights are not specifically allocated to private parties in the Voting Rights Act, even though many courts disagree.

Whatever manipulation of facts Stras can connive, common sense and precedent should override such an extreme ruling. But common sense seems in short supply in this case and in Congress, where changes to the Voting Rights Act have stalled.

So it’s important that Minnesota pass its own version. DFLers are supporting such a change, including Secretary of State Steve Simon. Minnesota law would guarantee private parties could sue under the Voting Rights Act and prevent discrimination such as gerrymandered voting maps that carve out politically biased districts. History has shown the vast majority of lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act have been initiated by private groups and not the federal government.

Legal experts and opposing judges argue that the U.S. attorney general, a politically appointed office and one Trump says he will be used against his enemies, should not be the only party allowed to file discrimination cases.

The Minnesota law would protect rights that seem to be eroding under federal law.

New York and Connecticut have already approved laws to protect voters’ “private right of action,” that provision the 8th Circuit struck down.

The proposed Minnesota law would also require private parties to notify municipal governments before they sue in order to allow for negotiated compromises. That is designed to avoid federal cases that can stretch on for years.

Simon said the Minnesota Voting Rights Act would give people their day in court and fill the gaps the federal ruling has left for people being able to sue for discrimination.

Minnesota Senate President Bobby Joe Champion, of Minneapolis and the lead author of the Minnesota Voting Rights Act summed it up:

“Our democracy is important. We want more people voting, not less. We want more people’s voice to be heard, not silenced. We want people’s rights to be protected, not squandered,” Champion said.

There is no other right more important in a democracy than the right to vote. All other rights and freedoms depend on that. The federal judiciary is increasingly partisan and Congress is mired in gridlock.

It’s time for the state of Minnesota to protect the voting rights of its people.

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