I’m No Lawyer…
By Mitch Berg
…so I have pretty much held my counsel on Monday’s SCOM decision on Tom Emmer’s request for reconciliation.
Joe Doakes – of Saint Paul’s Como Park neighborhood – is, in fact, a laywer. And he’s got an opinion. I’ll be adding emphasis:
[Monday], the Minnesota Supreme Court issued its opinion explaining why it denied Emmer’s request to have the number of ballots cast verified against the number of eligible voters before the vote totals were certified by the State.
Refresher: a prospective voters goes to the first table at the polling place to sign the roster; then he gets a receipt and takes it to the second table where the receipt is exchanged for a ballot; then he marks the ballot and deposits it in the ballot box. At the end of the night, all three are counted – number of eligible voters who signed the roster, number of receipts given, and number of ballots in the box.
The Court said: “ . . . the legislative intent appears to be to design a process that would guard against more ballots being counted than eligible voters voting.”
Yes, exactly right. Only eligible voters should be able to vote.
So far, so good.
The Court said: “Petitioner has not shown how counting voter’s receipts, which are given to voters only after they have signed the polling place roster and which constitute proof of the voter’s right to vote [citation omitted] is inconsistent with this legislative intent.”
Well, duh. That should be obvious. If the signature-receipt-ballot system worked perfectly every time, we wouldn’t need triple-entry bookkeeping to weed out cheaters. But if 100 people signed the book as eligible voters and 110 receipts and ballots appear in the boxes, there’s no way to know who put the extra receipts and ballots in the boxes. Presumably they were NOT deposited by eligible voters or the vote totals would match the signatures; therefore, the statute requires election officials to throw out excess ballots. It’s precisely because we don’t trust the system to work perfectly that we build in safeguards.
It’s here that the problems start:
The Court said: “In responses filed to the petition, certain local election officials appear to have conceded that they are not removing excess ballots . . . The validity of this practice was not raised in the petition and has not been fully presented to this court. Therefore, this issue is not before us, and we do not discuss it further.”
And sure enough, the system did NOT work perfectly. There were indeed more ballots cast than eligible voters, precisely the problem the legislature intended to address. Voting fraud does exist. If we’re to fulfill the legislature’s intent, we ought to order the counters to toss out those excess ballots before certifying the results.
Of course, the intent of the legislature gets filtered through whomever runs the legislature…
And finally, “Our review . . . establishes that the legislature intends the processes [for removing excess ballots] to be based on either the number of signatures on polling place rosters or on the number of voters receipts.”
Whaaat? How’d you reach that conclusion? We admit there’s a problem, it’s precisely the problem the legislature intended to address with its triple-entry bookkeeping system, but now you’re saying the legislature intended us to ignore it? Now it’s okay to skip the first step in the security check, the one step that proves the fraudulent origin of those excess votes?
If you’re only going to count receipts and ballots – no matter how they got into the box – then what’s the point of proving voter eligibility?
How can disarming the security system be consistent with the intent of maintaining a security system?
It makes no sense – as a stand-alone decision.
As a bit of legalistic buck-passing, though…:
This opinion makes no sense to me. The fact it’s unanimous means either the entire Court understood something about the law that I simply can’t grasp; or they wanted no part of another election lawsuit and kicked the case out on the flimsiest imaginable grounds, knowing the real solution is for the legislature to rework and clean up the election law through the political process. I’m betting on the latter.
Joe Doakes, Como Park
So there you go, Legislature. Tear it up!
December 9th, 2010 at 10:25 am
So we have more votes than we have registered voters. Big deal.
Minnesota has THE BEST ELECTION SYSTEM IN AMERICA. Isn’t that right, Doggie?
December 9th, 2010 at 10:33 am
The High Court specifically mentioned that the Secretary of State had decided to ignore the triple-security part of the law years ago because it made counting so much easier, and the Legislature hadn’t bothered to amend election law to over-ride the Secretary of State’s decision to ignore the law, so therefore the Legislature must have intended to disarm the security system. QED
In other words, we’ve been ignoring the law a long time and nobody made us obey it before now; so now we must keep ignoring it.
December 9th, 2010 at 10:36 am
I’m betting on the latter.
Me too. So this is how it will play out. The legislature will pass such changes, Dayton will veto it and that will be that. And in the next election cycle we’ll see the same problem. And the Supremes will have to deal with it again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
December 9th, 2010 at 10:53 am
In other words, someone – say a union official who is serving as a poll judge, might be able to gin up votes for his/her preferred candidate? Of course, in the real world, a union official would never consider this sort of dishonesty – because it’s just not right.
Besides, we have a Secty of State whose job is to make certain any irregularities in the process are enforced.
If I didn’t trust in the inherent goodness of human nature I might be suspicious. Thankfully, I know Minnesotans are beyond dishonesty and, therefore, don’t need to be monitored.
All is well.
December 9th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Let’s get honest here.
The majority of the people that show up to register at the polls on election day are clueless dolts that some leftist scumbag dragged down there.
People that give a shit plan. They know the issues, they know the candidates and they know they are registered. To say conservatives are trying to make it harder to vote is true to a point; we know that 99.9% of witless dolts will vote a straight moonbat ticket…and so do the moonbats; because they trained them.
I’m not saying we should disenfranchise idiots, but I don’t think we should be pandering to them either.
Same goes for absentee ballots. The Party of Scrubs has been pushing absentee voting because they know it’s easier to manipulate those ballots.
It’s simple.
Register before hand and vote on Election Day unless there is a verifiable reason you cannot be there; and “but that’s liquor day!” doesn’t count.
December 9th, 2010 at 11:35 am
I disagree with Swiftee. I want to disenfranchise idiots. Three good reasons:
Jesse Ventura
Al Franken
Mark Dayton
I’m sick of being a national joke.
December 9th, 2010 at 11:36 am
There is indeed little doubt that these last minute “get out the vote” campaigns and same-day registration are meant to get the least informed, least interested people to head down to the polls.
December 9th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Big Stink;
“Thankfully, I know Minnesotans are beyond dishonesty and, therefore, don’t need to be monitored.”
Funny stuff!
But, Mark Bitchie is a libidiot Iowan! Unfortunately, we are getting far too many libidiot Iowans moving here, screwing up that good old Minnesota honesty! 😉
December 9th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Kermit, we don’t need to act overtly to disenfranchise idiots.
If we simply make our elections available and accessible to everyone that is willing to take their franchise seriously, but make no effort to shoulder the burden for the brain dead, the idiots will disenfranchise themselves.
December 9th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
I’m sick of being a national joke.
Me to Kerm, but at least we not in as bad of financial condition as NY, CA, or IL. Plus we own the state house and senate for the first time in 25 some odd years. Both Dayton and Smalley will be gone in 2014, don’t worry.
December 9th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Swiftee, we, as a society, require proof of competency to enter into contractual agreements, yet any half-wit can be loaded onto a short bus and escorted into a polling place. Does this make any effing sense?
December 9th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
So turn the heat up on the goddam legislature to amend the law. If Maker’s Mark vetoes it, pass it again and send it right back to him and keep doing that every goddam month. Make the SOB regularly explain to the people of MN (who overwhelmingly support such legislation) why he thinks he should frustrate the will of the people. Given what a wretched communicator this stumblebum is, we should have a good size crowd with torches and pitchforks outside the governor’s mansion by the end of the year.
December 9th, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Joe:
“This opinion makes no sense to me”
Of course not. You are stupid and can not read. Thus, you invent “triple-entry bookkeeping system” out of whole cloth and then can not understand why the Court did not address it.
Nate:
“The High Court specifically mentioned that the Secretary of State had decided to ignore the triple-security part of the law years ago because it made counting so much easier”
No. The Court specifically mentioned that the Legislature changed the law (in 1977 and 1990). The SOS Administrative rules only confirm the Court’s reading on the Legislature’s clear intent.
December 9th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
OK, let me get this straight; the court admits more votes than registered voters, and admits that the legislature, in its laws, intended to prevent this. And then they argue that the literal meaning of the law in place, which would work towards this effect, is not the legislature’s intent.
Say what?
And Rick, the law is pretty clear. Signatures to votes is your comparison, period.
December 9th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
RickDFL said:
“You are stupid”
and thus he was funny.
December 9th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by mitchpberg, Andy Olson. Andy Olson said: RT @mitchpberg: The SCOM's "Reconciliation" decision: http://bit.ly/ejCBTX Kicking the can down the road. Bring on the session, baby. […]
December 10th, 2010 at 11:38 am
Bubbasan:
“OK, let me get this straight”
Not likely, but I admire the attempt.
“the court admits more votes than registered voters”
No, they did not. That is what they mean when they say the issue “has not been fully presented to this court.” That is legalese for something may have happened but we are not sure.
“and admits that the legislature, in its laws, intended to prevent this”
OK
“And then they argue that the literal meaning of the law in place, which would work towards this effect, is not the legislature’s intent”
No. This is why you need to read the document, instead of relying on random stuff you hear from nuts. They specifically deny Emmer’s claims about the literal meaning of the law: “The plain language of the statutes does not support petitioner’s arguments. Neither section 204C.20, subdivision 1, nor section 206.86, subdivision 1, includes the terms “polling place rosters” or “voter’s receipts”—the terms used in section 204C.10 to describe the current process by which a voter obtains a ballot. We cannot, therefore, conclude that the plain language of the statutes at issue either requires counting signatures on the polling place rosters or prohibits counting voter’s receipts.”
In fact the literal meaning of the statutes specifically denies Emmer’s claim “Because sections 204C.20 and 206.86, in their plain terms, allow election officials to count something other than signatures, specifically, [unsigned] names on the election register, petitioner’s plain-language argument fails.”
“And Rick, the law is pretty clear. Signatures to votes is your comparison, period.”
Again no. “In summary, Minnesota’s election laws have not relied exclusively on documents signed by voters to determine the number of ballots to be counted in the election. Instead, the Legislature has consistently permitted reference to the election judge’s indicator of voter eligibility and right to receive a ballot as a basis for determining the number of ballots to be counted. In addition, the voter’s receipt specifically serves one of the two purposes previously served by the signed voter’s certificate, namely, proof of the right to vote”
Basically there are two steps in voting. First there is a test of eligibility to vote. This involves finding a person on a list of voters and having them sign something. When this is done a voter is given a paper receipt which allows them to receive a ballot. Back before 1990, the thing you signed was ofter the same as the thing you turned in for a ballot. But that was not always the case. For example, “A form of the unsigned “election register” was used in elections from at least 1939 until it was eliminated in 1984 and was specifically identified in the statutes as a basis for determining the proper ballot numbers beginning in 1939”.
MN law has always allowed either the signed test of eligibility or the ballot receipt to be used to determine the limit to the number of ballots that can be counted. Again for a while pre-1990 this was often the same document, but that was not always the case and it was almost never the case after 1990.
December 10th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
RickDFL said:
“relying on random stuff you hear from nuts”
Indicating that you should not read his comment. Who knows why.