Gov. Pawlenty in the hockey jersey of the University of North Dakota, a state with early voting and no voter registration. Photo: nd.gov

If vetoes are like slapshot goals in hockey, then Gov. Tim Pawlenty scored an election-reform hat trick last week. After vetoing motor-voter and felon-notification, he scotched the state Legislature’s big omnibus elections bill.

The measure included provisions drawn from at least eight separate bills, from an earlier primary date to absentee-ballot streamlining. While the bill was  not everything reformers had sought — no early voting, for instance — it would have made dozens of improvements to the current system.

All fell to Pawlenty’s veto pen because the bill didn’t meet Republicans’ demand for new photo-ID requirements.

“Omnibus election bills making changes to our election process should be bipartisan. Unfortunately, this bill fails that test,” Pawlenty wrote in his veto letter (pdf) — a criticism he leveled at the other attempts at election reform as well.

The omnibus bill contained a long list of measures, minor and major, meant to improve Minnesota’s elections procedures.

Mike Dean, who directs the Minnesota office of the nonpartisan government-reform group Common Cause, laid the blame for the bills’ lack of bipartisan support at the feet of Pawlenty’s fellow Republicans in the state Legislature.

Their insistence on language mandating that prospective voters present photo identification was itself patently partisan, Dean said; the pool of voters for whom such a requirement is a problem likely leans left politically. In his view, Democrats correctly interpreted such changes to state election law as anti-DFL.

Interviewed hours before Pawlenty’s third election-reform veto, Dean called the first two vetos “disappointing and disingenous.” With them, Pawlenty discarded benefits that he claims to back, such as improved voter integrity and cost-savings for cities and counties.

Erin Sapp, election-reform project director at Heartland Democracy, likewise lamented that “Republican haven’t voted on the merits.”

Her group, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, has produced a report calling for universal voter registration — a goal that the motor-voter bill would have brought Minnesota closer to, by signing up driver’s-license applicants to vote (with opt-out available).

Almost every other democracy in the world has more liberal laws governing who can vote, Sapp said; indeed, as it originated in America, “voter registration was meant to bar people from voting.” Neighboring North Dakota has early voting and is the only state to do without voter registration altogether.

Too little, too late?

If Democrats “had been able to push [the omnibus bill] through earlier, they could have picked up 10 moderate-Republican votes,” Dean said — enough to override a veto or push Pawlenty to sign the bill.

With the contested Norm Coleman-Al Franken election providing a daily reminder of the need for reform, why didn’t the Legislature act sooner in the session? The Senate dispute itself was one reason — though not a good one, in Dean’s estimation.

“There was a hesitancy in leadership in the House because of the ongoing Senate trial,” he said — a wariness of an incorrect public perception that “changing state law would influence the trial.”

Reformers can try again next year, as Pawlenty himself suggested in his veto letter. Perhaps it’s more reasonable to expect that major changes like early voting would have a chance when the Coleman-Franken dispute is behind us. (That’s the gist of a Wednesday Pioneer Press editorial.)

But by the time the puck drops for the reconvened Legislature next February, Minnesota will likely have a second senator securely seated and the public’s sense of urgency on election reform may be lost — leaving the two sides to repeat this year’s face-off on reforming elections.

Correction: An earlier version of this article quoted Erin Sapp as saying, “Voter registration is meant to bar people from voting” (emphasis added). Sapp was referring to the origins of the policy, not its current use. 

That’s the message DFL state Sen. Ann Rest and Republican state Rep. Laura Brod had on MPR today for the breed of voters whose enigmatically marked ballots were on display during the recent Senate recount. Their cramped scribbles drew widespread derision from observers who apparently always colored inside the lines. State Canvassing Board members were often left scratching their heads at chicken-scratch markings as they tried to determine voter intent — a concept held sacred in state law.

But the ovals are apparently secure. The two state leaders, each with electoral reforms on her mind, sounded nonplussed unenthusiastic about the idea of changing ballot design to help more voters cast clear votes.

“I don’t think that the ballot itself is necessarily the problem,” Brod said. “It’s a pretty clear ballot. We’ve just got to get people to fill the circle in and do it right. That’s just a matter of education.”

For her part, Rest acknowledged that ”it is our obligation to find ways to make it easier for Minnesotans to vote in an election,” but said the solution to errant ballot markings is “increased and more sophisticated training of election judges.”

The currently prescribed two to three hours of training don’t prepare workers to handle a rush of voters, who, because “they’re very young or very old, are not paying attention and mark an X in a box rather than filling in an oval, she said.

“As we gain more experience with our paper ballot, that will become less of an issue,” Rest assured the radio audience.

There’s a national trend that some say Minnesota is conspicuously absent.

Dozens of states have recently moved up their presidential primaries to February, and some even to January, challenging the so-called “first four”: New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina, who lead the nation in the process of choosing presidential candidates. 

The DFL-controlled state legislature failed to pass legislation that would have moved presidential primaries, known here as caucuses, from March to Feb. 5. More than 10 states, including California and New York, have moved their primaries to that day, now called “monster Tuesday.”

Florida also made headlines when it moved its primaries to Jan. 29. New Hampshire and South Carolina, who adamantly oppose anyone stealing the spotlight from them, threatened to hold their primaries as early as November or December this year if states don’t quell their race to early primaries.

It’s part of a national leapfrogging trend meant to have a say in nominating presidential candidates. The so-called “first four” have been monopolizing that role for years. The drama and the incentives for early primaries were becoming too great of a temptation to ignore for many states. Presidential candidates shuttle around the “first four,” spending millions of dollars in campaign money. The hype of the media beset those states for almost two years.

“There would be no drama by March,” said state Rep. Steve Simon, DFL-St. Louis Park, who introduced the legislation that didn’t pass this session.

More InsideIn February, leaders of the main political parties in Minnesota held a rare press conference, touting Simon’s legislation and emphasizing that early primaries would raise the profile of the state overnight.

But Simon blames Republicans for effectively filibustering his legislation, which easily passed committees in the House and in the Senate. It was up for vote in the last day of the session.

Republicans “talked, talked and talked until they ran out of the clock,” he said.

The Republican Party was not immediately available for comment.

So for ’08 primaries, the state is stuck on a March date, which is increasingly becoming irrelevant.

State Sen. Dan Larson, DFL-Bloomington, who also introduced a similar bill this session, was unhappy with how his bill was killed.

“Moving the primary is good for everyone,” he said. “But I understand that election reform is difficult.”

In addition to presidential caucuses, his bill would also have moved local primaries from September to June. Minnesota is among only five states that hold a primary election in or after September.

Critics of early primaries say it would lengthen the election period, prompt a slew of TV ads early on and discourage citizens from voting.

Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, introduced a counter-legislation that would have postponed the primary election to October. His bill didn’t get enough traction in the legislature.

But he said he supports the provisions in Simon and Larson’s bills to move presidential caucuses to February.

“It’s wise to be part of the states that choose the next president,” he said. “By March, we would know who the nominees for president are.”

Rep. Simon and Sen. Larson pledged to reintroduce the bill next year.