Secretary of State Steve Simon on Wednesday urged state lawmakers to take up a proposal to expand mail-in balloting to Minnesota voters in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
Minnesota’s top election official said with the spread of COVID-19 poised to continue into the summer and potentially reemerge in the fall, poll workers and voters could be apprehensive about participating in elections the way they normally would. And Simon asked that the Legislature work quickly as the state would be working on a tight deadline to print mailing materials for the August primary contest and train election officials.
The House Subcommittee on Elections on Wednesday discussed Simon’s proposal that would grant the secretary of state authority to modify election procedures during infectious disease outbreaks. That could include a mail-based election, closing down high-risk polling stations and allowing county or city elections officials to designate health care or hospital workers to temporarily administer absentee voting to patients or residents under the proposal.
The conversation comes a day after Wisconsin voters went to the polls for the state’s presidential primary contest despite a stay-at-home order in place in that state. And some voters there waited hours to vote at a smaller number of polling locations after poll workers abruptly quit out of fear for their health.
“Until we’re told otherwise, we need to treat statewide elections in Minnesota as a public health issue,” Simon said. “If we guess that the crisis will go past us and it will be over by August or that there won’t be a wave 2 in November, and if we guess wrong, we’re in for a real disaster.”
Five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington — offer elections by mail only. And in Minnesota, 130,000 voters are already set up to vote by mail, Simon said.
In the face of a pandemic, Simon said, asking poll workers to staff polling stations and voters to come into potentially crowded areas could pose a public health risk. To mitigate that, lawmakers should start planning for contingencies that could reduce health hazards, he said.
The proposal met quick opposition from Republican lawmakers who raised concerns about ballots being snatched from mailboxes and an additional risk of voter fraud. And they said changing laws around the elections could be premature since it’s not clear whether the pandemic would persist for months.
“I’m not on board with the way the bill reads; I’m not going to be on board with the way the bill reads,” Rep. Jim Nash, R-Waconia, said. He suggested adding polling locations or finding other ways to make in-person voting safer. “It’s going to provide for a lot of electioneering and it does open the door for elections fraud.”
The Senate Elections Committee Chair Mary Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake, said the state should consider shifting more focus to the state’s no-excuse absentee balloting system before changing state laws. Minnesota GOP Chair Jennifer Carnahan called Simon’s proposal an “effort to steal our free and fair process to win elections.”
Minnesota Association of County Officers, local election workers and the League of Women Voters, along with the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota expressed support for the bill and asked lawmakers to take up plans that could keep workers and voters safe at the polls. They said voters and workers had concerns about adequate social distancing in polling locations around the state.
“Many of these polling places are quite small. Think of the rural town hall, that’s a one-room location that’s enough room for election judges to be set up and voters to come in,” Deborah Erickson, Crow Wing County’s administrative services director, said. Erickson noted that lines of voters might extend out into parking lots and beyond. And in November, that could be a chilly prospect.
The committee didn’t take action on the bill Wednesday and said they would continue discussions about options to limit the disease’s spread in future hearings.