As the messy debate about voting rights continues across the country, Minnesotans can collectively sigh in relief that one new measure having to do with voting makes straightforward Midwestern sense.
The state Legislature passed a law during the most recent session that standardizes the use of absentee ballot drop boxes.
Who would have thought such a simple act would amount to such glorious logic? As the Texas Legislature proposes banning drive-thru and 24-hour voting, making mail-in voting more difficult, increasing criminal penalties for voting mistakes, and giving partisan poll watchers more authority at voting sites, Minnesota lawmakers just completed a session in which they decided the hodge-podge approach to dropping off ballots needed attention.
That doesn’t mean voting rights won’t continue to be debated in the Midwest — there were measures at the Minnesota Legislature that members did not agree on — but at least the session ended with a practical measure that speaks to making voting better for everyone.
Minnesota statute now officially defines a drop box as a secure receptacle or container that is accessible 24 hours a day.
Yes, like a corner U.S. mailbox but for absentee ballots instead of letters.
And just like a mailbox, they must be secure receptacles or containers that are accessible night and day (with video monitoring during the voting period). And like a mailbox, the boxes must be designed to prevent tampering, be protected from weather and emptied at least once per business day.
Yes, like the reliable mailboxes we’ve been using for a long time.
Such a simple action as standardizing those drop boxes is as comforting as knowing the postal carrier will make it through the snow, sleet and rain to deliver the mail. Voting should be as easy as mailing a letter, and as of today, Minnesota law says it is.
Republished with permission.
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I will only place my sealed ballot in a drop box that is in a secure government building.
With REPS running amuck across the country writing hundreds of voter suppression laws, gerrymandering, disenfranchising voters in every way imaginable, continuing to spread Trump’s Big Lie, and the Supreme Court making it all easier (?!)…emptying or carting away an outdoor drop box wb a pretty simple additional thing for them to add to their arsenal:(
“emptying or carting away an outdoor drop box wb a pretty simple additional thing for them to add to their arsenal”
I agree it’s just another opportunity to cheat and so the entire “drop box” idea should be eliminated. If you want to vote, stand in line on election day like the rest of us. There’s nothing in the constitution that says voting should be convenient. Anybody who defends ridiculous voting rules like “drop boxes” is obviously looking for ways to cheat.
“If you want to vote, stand in line on election day like the rest of us. There’s nothing in the constitution that says voting should be convenient.”
But there should be equal access: In my green leafy Republican township, over the course of 35 years of voting it has never taken more than 5 minutes from the time I pull into the convenient parking spot ten yards from the entry to my polling place to being back in my vehicle and being on my way with my “I Voted” sticker on my chest. 35 Years!
Compare that to folks waiting hours in line and, in some cases, denied even a drink of water as they wait. Drop boxes are one tool to enable equal access to the vote. But that is not how Republicans’ see it: their version of “equal access” allows for one group to have voting being easy, fast and convenient and the other not.
In the days of Jim Crow, both groups had access to sitting on a bus, drinking from a water fountain or eating at a cafe. Just not as easy, fast and convenient. Republican 2021 voter suppression efforts are just like Jim Crow no matter how much R outrage we hear otherwise.
Seems to me that these democrat-run municipalities could do more to add polling places to accommodate the flood of democrat voters they surely are expecting.
Except…some of us have been very ill for many years and can’t stand long, let alone all day in all sorts of weather…&/or standing among the masses in a still ongoing pandemic…. A more thoughtful, empathetic response actually addressing ways for us all to vote simply, safely and securely while shutting down all of the REP obfuscation would have sufficed and been welcomed.
Seems to me that you would qualify for an absentee ballot, like others in your circumstances. What did you do before “drop boxes?” Do that again.
I’m not gonna mail in my ballot either, so long as DeJoy is in charge of the Post Office and working overtime to destroy it and all of the mail in ballots processed–or lost or moved elsewhere or destroyed–in each. Driving to my nearest govn center bldg and quickly walking my ballot in while masked–past the unmasked long lines–so it can be placed in a drop box inside (where guards and security systems are in place and the bldg locked nightly) is my current preferred method. Now watch the REPS read this and start bombing govn bldgs…
Oh, is MinnPost once more allowing conservatives to use the uncivil pejorative use of the word “democrat”?
There is a long history of conservatives using “democrat” in place of the proper “democratic”, going back to Joe McCarthy. At times, MinnPost mods have not allowed the use of this pejorative, in keeping with MinnPost standards to keep the discussion both civil and respectful. But perhaps, like much of the MSM, MinnPost has fallen victim to the decades old strategy of working the refs.
If the mods are now allowing us to be disrespectful, so be it, as long as sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander as well.
“There’s nothing in the constitution that says voting should be convenient.”
Mr. Tester, with all due respect, allow me to share with you why convenient voting goes back to our nation’s earliest days.
Why is it we have come to vote on Tuesdays? The reason is that that was the most convenient day of the week for those few citizens who were allowed the franchise. There was not some ridiculous thought of “well there’s no need to make voting convenient, if they REALLY want to vote, they’ll make the effort to come out, even if they have other business to attend to.” When only white, property owning males were allowed to vote, we made it easy. No reason we cannot do the same now. That’s why the Florida GOP made vote by mail so easy, so their old voters had, you know, convenience.
Anybody who claims to believe in American democracy (or, if you insist, the American republic) should see the intrinsic good in maximizing citizen participation.
Seems to me.