MPR, Brian Bakst reporting:
Minnesota’s new law granting quicker restoration of voting rights to people convicted of felonies is being challenged in court by a group disputing the way it was enacted.
A group known as the Minnesota Voters Alliance sued in Anoka County District Court Thursday to try to stop the law passed by the Legislature earlier this year. It allows adults who aren’t incarcerated to vote even if they remain on parole or probation, which were obstacles they faced in the past.
An estimated 50,000 people were impacted by the change, which will allow them to vote in elections beginning this year.
In the lawsuit, the conservative voter’s group argues that writers of the state constitution intended for all aspects of a sentence to be completed before civil rights, including voting, are restored. They say a change approved by the Legislature isn’t enough.
[...] The voting rights of felons has been through Minnesota courts before. In February, the Minnesota Supreme Court deferred to the Legislature to determine when a person could regain voting rights.
The law passed soon after and registration of people covered by the law began in early June.
Put another way these obstreperous people are blowing things out of their shorts. They could get a district judge to bless their thing, but on appeal it's DOA.
Why bother?
And back to the headline - why Anoka County? Do these people regard us as Whacko Village, or what?
Moreover, there is this:
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How can they be a 501(c)(3) operation if they're fucking around with voting rights?
__________UPDATE_________
Roughly the in-a-nutshell analysis of law - the opinion Crabgrass holds where anyone can have opinions about laws - is:
The Minnesota Constitution controls; and in relevant [italicized] part requires:
ARTICLE VII
ELECTIVE FRANCHISE
Section 1. Eligibility; place of voting; ineligible persons.
Every person 18 years of age or more who has been a citizen of the United States for three months and who has resided in the precinct for 30 days next preceding an election shall be entitled to vote in that precinct. The place of voting by one otherwise qualified who has changed his residence within 30 days preceding the election shall be prescribed by law. The following persons shall not be entitled or permitted to vote at any election in this state: A person not meeting the above requirements; a person who has been convicted of treason or felony, unless restored to civil rights; a person under guardianship, or a person who is insane or not mentally competent.
The Constitution is silent upon how one can be "restored to civil rights," and does not prevent restoration being piecemeal. By silence on detail, the detail was left to the legislature. Hence, Minn. Stat. Sec. 609.165 controlled prior to the last legislative section's actions. It still controls as to federal gun-related Second Amendment rights being constrained by its express terms, unchanged by subsequent legislative action.
The right to vote is expressly restored last session by SF26 having passed both houses and been signed by the Governor, stating:
Minnesota Statutes 2022, section 201.014, is amended by adding a subdivision to read:
Subd. 2a. Felony conviction; restoration of civil right to vote.
An individual who is ineligible to vote because of a felony conviction has the civil right to vote restored during any period when the individual is not incarcerated for the offense. If the individual is later incarcerated for the offense, the individual's civil right to vote is lost only during that period of incarceration.
If a statutory contradiction exists between two statutes, the more recent controls over the older, and the more specific controls over the more general; those being two recognized rules of statutory construction; each supporting the new Act.
Partial piecemeal attention to differing rights is legitimate, and the new legislation has no Constitutional infirmity in that a matter left to the legislature to define in scope and application has been so defined. End of story.
A conditional restoration of the civil right to vote, such as the "so long as not reincarcerated" condition is perfectly fine law.
Crabgrass would prefer felons never losing their voting rights and allowed to vote while in prison, but that is not how things presently stand. Unfortunately, it appears a Constitutional Amendment would be needed to change wording in the text set out at the start of this UPDATE. Decency toward others and promotion of rehabilitation favor such a change; while procedural impediments exist.
In effect, the absence of the legislature's amending Sect. 609.165 expressly; which would have been the better practice; is no impediment to the new provision having full force and effect. The two statutes, read together, leave no sane alternative reading. The Schroeder case says things are up to the legislature. That Courts cannot legitimately gin up some ghost of an ambiguity where none exists.
These people filing their stuff in Anoka County know all this.
They are just being troublemakers. Because they can. They have paid the filing fee, and that set the wheels in motion, regardless of the lack of merit in what they are doing which is wasting judicial time.