MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota Democrats say disinformation about elections has flourished in the two years since the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, and voters anxious about the future of democracy helped propel their party into complete control of state government.
Now they want to use that power to expand access to the ballot, while at the same time strengthening protections for election workers who have been the target of threats since the 2020 election.
"The attacks have not stopped. The disinformation and lies about our election system have only grown," said DFL Rep. Emma Greenman, co-chair of a new democracy caucus unveiled Friday on the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack. "This didn't happen overnight, and there are no quick fixes to the damage that has been done."
DFL Gov. Tim Walz is encouraging the Democratic-led Legislature to think big on proposals that make it easier to vote, inspired to lean into the effort by the push in GOP-led states over the last two years to restrict access to the ballot. Across the country, Democratic leaders are trying to go on the offense on voting legislation.
"We've seen nationally, when Republicans have unified party control of a state, they've been pretty effective at passing a lot of legislation," said University of Minnesota political science Professor Kathryn Pearson. "It will be interesting to see if the DFL in Minnesota is effective in a similar scenario."
The Minnesota House and Senate introduced bills this week to enact automatic voter registration, pre-register 16- and 17-year-olds to vote and allow voters to be put on a list to permanently vote by mail.
One of the quickest election-related bills that could pass is a proposal to restore voting rights to those with felony convictions on their record who are now on probation. Democrats also want to make one of the first overhauls to the state's campaign finance laws since the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United, which led to an explosion in outside money influencing state elections.
"Minnesotans told us loud and clear that protecting and expanding democracy is critical and that they agree that the threat of extremism is real and active," said state Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville, who is sponsoring a package of election changes this year.
Republicans in the Senate attacked the DFL proposals, saying there's a tradition at the Capitol to move election bills only with bipartisan support.
"The fact that my colleagues across the aisle are more interested in passing their hyper-partisan wish lists than they are in finding common ground on our elections is a disservice to all voters," said Sen. Mark Koran, the GOP lead on the Elections Committee.
Many of Democrats' proposals have been circulating at the Capitol for years, but they weren't heard by the GOP-led Senate. Since 2020, Republicans have pushed to limit the number of people who can vote by mail and revived a proposal to require photo ID at the polls, efforts that didn't get hearings in the DFL-led House.
While the parties have worked together in the past to pass some election law changes, divisions have only grown on the issue since the 2020 election.
"There are members of the Legislature who are election deniers," said Greenman, who is also a voting rights attorney. She and other members of the new democracy caucus were sworn into elected office for the first time one day before the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Greenman is hopeful Democrats can get bipartisan support for a package of bills that aims to protect the 30,000 volunteers who help make elections happen each cycle. Election workers, who represent both political parties, have faced increased threats since the 2020 election.
Roughly two dozen counties in Minnesota were also targeted this fall by a group pushing for officials to count ballots by hand. That included Stearns County, despite voters there overwhelmingly supporting Donald Trump in the last two presidential races.
"Those votes are counted in the church basement, they are counted at the elementary school," Stearns County Commissioner Joe Perske said Friday. "They are not sent to Washington, they aren't sent to St. Paul, they are counted by your neighbors."
Democrats feel emboldened by the results of the 2022 election, which saw voters reject candidates in Minnesota and across the country who denied or questioned the results of the 2020 election. They also reelected many Democratic secretaries of state, including Steve Simon, who won by the highest margin of any statewide official in the 2022 election.
Simon plans to unveil his top priorities for the legislative session next week, and pieces of the Democrats' election agenda will get their first hearings in committees.
Reflecting Friday on what's changed in Minnesota since Jan. 6, 2021, DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman chimed in: "One word: trifecta."
