Capitol notebook: Election rule reform

Election rule reform

The quality of Minnesota's election system has been debated in two prominent forums lately -- creating some curious contradictions.

Before the Minnesota Supreme Court, Republican Norm Coleman is appealing DFLer Al Franken's victory in a postelection trial. Coleman's lawyers have filed briefs arguing that the state's election process, especially for absentee voters, has numerous problems that disenfranchised voters and justify the court's intervention.

But in the Legislature last week, most of Coleman's fellow Republicans opposed bills aiming to reform the election system. Republicans argued that allowing early voting and streamlining rules concerning absentee ballots could undermine the integrity of elections.

Meanwhile, Franken's attorneys argued in their brief to the Supreme Court that the state voting process worked well in the Senate race, and that the strict requirements on absentee voters in state law were justified to prevent fraud.

But his fellow DFLers in the Legislature last week mostly backed the reforms to those rules that Republicans opposed.

So DFLers want to change an election system that (so far) has favored their candidate, while Republicans want to stick with that system.

Newsflash for those of you not already on Twitter: It's dead. Politicians have discovered it, officially killing the coolness factor of the latest social networking site.

In the past few weeks, Gov. Tim Pawlenty has tweeted that he was 1) mowing his lawn, 2) helping kids with homework, 3) attending the Fishing Opener, 4) getting to work on his "honey do" list.

How about Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher? She has tweeted about kids at the Capitol in tuxes and gowns for prom, the breakfast her kids made her on Mother's Day and twitted (old-school usage) the governor about his refusal to show up at her Legislative Commission on Planning and Fiscal Policy so he can spill all his secrets about how he plans to end the session.

Result? Kelliher says Pawlenty has blocked her on Twitter. Burn!

Debate in the House Wednesday over the Senate's "lights on" bill revealed deep divisions not only between the DFL and Republican parties, but within the state GOP as well.

That brought a fiery response from Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, who fairly shouted that House Republicans inherited a $6.5 billion surplus from the DFL in 1998 and turned it into a $4.5 billion deficit in four years.

Rukavina mentioned that among recent special sessions, two were called by Republican Gov. Arne Carlson in the 1990s. Rep. Kurt Zellers, R-Maple Grove, didn't like the analogy.

"While it's true that Gov. Carlson carried the same party designation while he was governor, he's not on our side anymore. Don't lump him in with me," Zellers said. "Arne, if you're listening, get off my team."

Carlson, who styles himself a "Republican maverick," angered many in the GOP when he endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president last year. This week, he said that Gov. Tim Pawlenty should consider tax increases to help balance the budget.

It didn't take long for the DFL to turn adversity into a pitch for financial support to combat Pawlenty's threat to use his powers of unallotment and line-item veto to balance the budget.

"Gov. Pawlenty needs to hear that his plan to balance the budget on the backs of children, the elderly and the disabled is not the way out of the budget deficit," Kelliher's e-mail states.

The prospect of video gambling in bars keeps rearing its head as an answer to a billion-dollar hole in the budget. On Friday, several attempts to introduce video gambling provisions failed in the House on procedural grounds before any actual votes were forced. The idea could be gaining momentum for a couple of reasons, perhaps most significantly the argument that the statewide smoking ban is hurting bars and restaurants, which badly need a new form of revenue.

The debate could result in a classic confrontation for DFLers, particularly in the House. The need to appease struggling bar owners could smack up against the realities of one of the caucuses' most prolific contributors, namely the American Indian tribes that operate tribal casinos. Tribes represented three of the top 10 political action committee contributors to the DFL House Caucus in 2008. Those tribes alone contributed $292,000 to House DFLers.

"It's a little like a petri dish around here. Things breed and spread like you wouldn't believe."

-- Kelliher, referring to a rumor that Pawlenty was going to announce his intention to use vetoes and unallotments to balance the budget. The announcement came minutes later.

-- Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, praising a bill that requires alcohol to be sold throughout the new Gophers football stadium, even though the Board of Regents wanted it limited to luxury and corporate suites.

"You spent like a bunch of drunken sailors. I apologize to the members of the Navy."

-- Rukavina, during House debate