Had state Sen. Kathy Sheran’s bill to reform absentee voting dodged Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto pen last year, it might have spared Minnesota some of the agony of the current statewide recount. Sheran denied foreknowledge that this year’s Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race would hang on absentee ballots. Now she tells the Minnesota Independent her reform effort also wasn’t inspired by a recount that involved a contested absentee ballot in her first race 24 years ago.

That story is told in government meeting minutes that are — amazingly — available online going back more than 50 years at the City of Mankato Web site. But proximity to the state’s most dramatic recounts seems to run in the family for Sheran, whose father, a longtime chief justice on the state Supreme Court, joined the high court in the midst of Minnesota’s last major statewide recount.

Sheran’s 2007 bill was the latest in a long line of legislation proposed since 1994 but never signed into law that would make it easier for Minnesotans to cast a valid absentee ballot. Under her bill, voters wouldn’t have to give a specific reason for voting absentee, such as being unable to make it to the polling place on Election Day. Regular absentee voters could have signed up to automatically receive absentee ballots, rather than applications for ballots, before each election. Voters who can’t get to their polling places because of illness or disability, or who live in nursing homes, could have an absentee ballot sent to and cast by an agent they designate. And Minnesotans who are out of state wouldn’t have to have their ballots witnessed by a registered Minnesota voter or a notary public, unless it’s their first time voting absentee.

(That last measure wouldn’t have been enough to help one Minnesota voter in New York who told MnIndy her initial absentee ballot this fall was rejected for improper witnessing – a problem she was able to remedy only by last minute heroics.)

Anyone with Internet access can trace Sheran’s concern for the plight of absentee voters back to her first election nearly a quarter century ago. A special meeting of the Mankato City Council on Sept. 18, 1984, in its capacity as the local canvassing board, heard Sheran make the case for tallying an absentee voter’s challenged ballot in a primary election for an at-large seat on the council:

Kathleen Sheran, 117 West Glencrest, appeared before the Council stating that the outcome of the election would not be changed overall by the one challenged ballot. She explained that the opportunity of the person to vote is significant, and determining the validity of the ballot in question was an important decision. She stated that she appreciated the way the challenged ballot was presented. Ms. Sheran further stated that the Council must determine the voters intent. She questioned whether the scribbling on the ballot would identify the ballot, and should this take away that person’s right to vote. She stated that it might be easier to say that one vote would not make a difference to the outcome of the election.

The ballot was counted and though it didn’t tip the election, it allowed Sheran to increase her lead over the third-place finisher by five instead of only four votes:

Mr. Smith moved to accept the challenged absentee ballot as a vote for Kathleen Sheran for the office of Councilmember At-Large. Mrs. Lofy seconded the motion. Mr. Hagemann, Mrs. Lofy, Mr. Smith and Mayor Mocol voted aye. Mr. Christ and Mrs. Brown voted nay. The motion carried. Mr. Hagemann then moved to approve the results of the re-count of the Primary Election for the office of Councilperson At-Large, with 1,390 votes for Francis X. Brady, 1,513 votes for Paul V. Meyer, and 1,395 votes for Kathleen Sheran. Mrs. Brown seconded the motion, all voting aye, the motion carried.

Sheran went on to take first place — and her first elective office — in the general election that year, as she explained in a recent e-mail to MnIndy:

The first time I ran for election to the Mankato at large seat there were three candidates…so in the primary I came in second….in the general election I came in first…and served 16 years… The vote was so close that there was a recount…for the primary that is…I won by a significant amount in the general election. I can’t remember the numbers for the final outcome that year. It is interesting you ask if my interest dated back to this experience.  The answer is no…this did not enter my mind at any point during the introduction of the absentee ballot bill. The bill I introduced served to increase access to persons who might not otherwise be able to vote, and provided an option of getting some assistance to recieve a ballot, while limiting the number of persons one person can assist. I enjoyed looking back at the minutes you found….LONG time ago and would not have remembered this appearance unless you had shown me these minutes…actually..still don’t recall the appearance… I do remember the recount!

Proximity to dramatic Minnesota recounts seems to run in Kathy Sheran’s family. She’s following in the footsteps of her father, Robert. J. Sheran, who after wartime service as an agent in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, was elected to two terms (1947-50) as Mankato’s state senator.

Robert Sheran

Ten years later, the elder Sheran, a DFLer, joined the state Supreme Court, taking his place on the bench Jan. 8, 1963 — just as Minnesota’s last great statewide recount in the governor’s race was getting underway. He narrowly missed a direct role in that recount: A series of preliminary decisions that favored the Republican incumbent soon after the election led to an agreement by both sides to forego the Supreme Court for a separate, three-judge panel that would oversee the recount. Sheran might have recused himself anyway, since that recount involved Republican Elmer L. Anderson — the man who had just appointed Sheran to the high court.

Later Robert Sheran was elevated to chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, where he served for eight years, 1973-81. During that time current Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, who’s also a member of the State Canvassing Board that will certify Franken or Coleman as winner of the Senate recount, learned the judicial ropes as a clerk in Sheran’s office.

None of which answers the question: Why the heck does the City of Mankato Web site have city council meeting minutes from 1984 (let alone 1957!) online? According to City Manager Patrick Hentges, city staff realized five or six years ago that a resource they’d found useful — records of city council meetings going back to the Eisenhower era — might be enjoyed by Mankato citizens (and the Whole World Wide Web, by extension).

It’s advantageous for all involved in city matters to review the record on recurring topics. “A lot of these issues go back … We dealt with them before, in 19-whatever,” Hentges says. He adds that having council meeting minutes — and soon, video excerpts — available online makes up for the inevitable loss of institutional knowledge as council members and city staff come and go over the years.

Ironically, Kathy Sheran’s freshman year, 1985, is one of only four years since 1957 that are missing from Mankato’s online archive of city council meeting minutes. Hentges said city staffers aren’t sure what happened to the records from those years.

▲ What elected official set the table for both the 1962 and 2008 recounts by backing out of or losing a race?

▲ How does the name Freeman figure into the 1962 and 2008 recounts?

▲ What are two echoes in 2008 of the Highway 35 scandal in 1962?

Answers after the jump. Answers:

▲ Walter Mondale. As Minnesota’s young attorney general in 1962, his decision not to pursue the DFL endorsement for governor left the field open for eventual winner Karl Rolvaag. And in 2002, Mondale’s unsuccessful last-minute candidacy as a fill-in for the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone set the stage for Republican Norm Coleman to seek re-election to the seat in 2008.

▲ Gov. Orville Freeman lost to Republican State Sen. Elmer Andersen in 1960, setting up the 1962 contest between Rolvaag and Anderson. In 2008, Mike Freeman, Orville Freeman’s son, used his position as Hennepin County attorney to propose that local officials sort rejected absentee ballots so as to create a so-called “fifth pile” of ballots that had been wrongly rejected.

▲ The I-35W bridge collapse in 2007 and reconstruction in 2008 occurred on the same highway that was the subject of a scandal that broke just before the 1962 election concerning construction costs, possibly hurting Andersen. The 2008 election had its own last-minute scandal involving lawsuits filed in Texas and Delaware that alleged that businessman Nasser Kazeminy had funneled money to Coleman via Coleman’s wife’s job. That scandal may have hurt the Coleman vote.