MN Senate Republicans have managed to take what should have been a bi-partisan no-brainer, giving access to federal funds to secure our election systems, into a confused mess. This story is long with a lot of twists, so grab a cup of tea and settle in.
Background
In 2016, Minnesota was one of 21 states that were targeted by foreign hackers. While there’s no indication the hacks were successful, the Department of Homeland Security has worked with our Secretary of State’s office to evaluate our election systems and have identified vulnerabilities that we need to fix.
The federal government passed a bill called the Help America Vote Act that included money for states to secure their election infrastructure. Minnesota received $6.6 million dollars. But Minnesota is also one of just a handful of states that need state legislative approval to access those funds, so we had some hoops to jump through.
Last year, a bill to grant access to about $1.5 million of that funding was bundled into the 998-page omnibus bill which Dayton vetoed… because it was a ridiculous bill and a slap in the face to the single subject rule of the MN constitution. Why only $1.5 million? That was the amount Steve Simon, Secretary of State, had initially asked for to get started on some immediate projects.
Unfortunately, he didn’t get any of the funding and there were immediate needs. He found a non-profit and a program through a private company to help with a few projects and reallocated money away from other areas to perform upgrades they could perform with their existing resources. He also brought together a working group (including legislators) and the DHS and developed a detailed project proposal for the best way to allocate the full $6.6 million to secure our election systems. That list of projects went to legislators in December and no one raised any concerns at that time.
This session
At the beginning of this legislative session, Speaker Hortman and Majority Lead Gazelka identified a few items from the failed omnibus that they thought they would pass quickly to get the legislative session off to a good start. Election security funding was one of those things.
The House introduced two bills: HF14 (full funding) and HF17 ($1.5 million funding). The Senate introduced their companion bills SF93 (full funding) and SF241 ($1.5 million funding).
The House quickly started moving both bills through the committee on solid bipartisan votes with very few concerns raised from legislators of either party. The only concerns were about MN IT, which has absolutely nothing to do with these election security systems as MN IT doesn’t run them. There were some attempts to tack provisional balloting onto the bill, but they were easily defeated and the bills moved through cleanly.
In the meantime, over in the Senate, nothing was happening. Both bills were waiting for a hearing in the State Government Finance and Policy and Elections committee chaired by Senator Kiffmeyer. It was odd, because Kiffmeyer was the chief author on both bills and this funding was named as a priority by the party leader. So we waited..
The Senate hears a bill
Finally, on February 11th, Kiffmeyer scheduled a hearing for both bills but then she changed it to have SF93 (remember, that’s the bill for full funding) only be an informational hearing. The committee would only be allowed to vote on SF241 (the small bill).
The hearing didn’t go terribly well. Committee Democrats could not get a good answer for why the bill for full funding wasn’t getting a hearing. They offered amendments to SF241 to change the bill so it included full funding; the GOP voted those amendments down. Eventually SF241 passed out of committee, but the informational session for SF93 (the good one) was canceled.
Eventually, another informational session for SF93 was scheduled. Steve Simon answered everyone’s questions. No one had any complaints about the projects on the lists. No vote was held.
Excuse roundup
When Kiffmeyer was asked why she was only passing the bill for $1.5 million when both Hortman and Gazelka agreed to pass election security funding she said they only had agreed to pass what was in the omnibus that was vetoed and that she was living up the agreement.
Gazelka just referred the issue back to Kiffmeyer. Since she’s the committee chair, he deferred to how she wanted to deal with the bills.
Senator John Howe showed up at a hearing to complain about illegal voting, an unrelated and largely nonexistent issue.
Several GOP Senators took hearing time to complain about MNLARS and the MN IT department. MN IT does not run the elections system, but that didn’t stop them from trying to tie these unrelated issues together.
There was an attempt to use the required matching funds as an excuse (SF241 contained it, SF93 didn’t), but we have two years to allocate the matching funds and only need about $165,000. Nothing to delay the bill over.
There was an attempt to say the HAVA funds require that we implement a provisional balloting system. They don’t. Since we have same day voter registration, we are exempt from the provisional balloting provision.
There were general complaints about the need for more oversight. These are federal funds and there is oversight in place for how they are spent.
There were general complaints that Democrats just can’t be trusted with money.
The House passes HF14 and the Senate screws it up
Now things are about to get really confusing. The House passed HF14 (the good bill) with only 23 “no” votes and sent it to the Senate. It’s standard practice for the contents of the bill to be deleted and replaced with its Senate companion bill (that would be SF93 in this case) BUT instead of that happening the contents of HF14 were deleted and replaced with SF241 (the small bill) before it came up for a full Senate vote. So HF14, which was the good bill, was now the bad bill and was being heard by the full Senate.
Democrats offered an amendment to change the now bad HF14 bill and restore the language for allowing access to the full election security funds. It was voted down on party lines (Republicans voted against full funding). The final bill (now bad) was passed out of the Senate on party lines (Democrats voted against the final, small, bill in protest). Republicans immediately tried to use that vote to claim Democrats are the ones voting against election security.
What now?
Since the bill passed by the House and the Senate did not match, the bill has to go to a conference committee where they will produce a compromise bill that will go back to the House and Senate for a final vote. Hopefully, the conference committee restores the language for full funding but there’s no guarantee of that.
The House has already named the members that will represent them in the conference committee: Nelson, Dehn, and Vogel.
The Senate has not yet named their conference committee members.
What can you do?
- If your representative is on the conference committee (Nelson, Dehn, and Vogel), please call and thank them for passing the full funding bill out of the House and urge them to keep full funding in the conference committee report.
- If your representative was one of the 23 who voted against passing this bill out of the House, call and ask them why and talk to your neighbors about how their representative voted against election security funding.
- Albright, Backer, Bahr, Daudt, Drazkowski, Erickson, Fabian, Franson, Green, Grossell, Gruenhagen, Heinrich, Heintzeman, Hertaus, Johnson, Koznick, Lucero, McDonald, Mekeland, Miller, Munson, Poston, and Quam
- Call Senator Gazelka (651-296-4875) and urge his committee to quickly name the Senate members of the conference committee
- Raise awareness of this issue. Write letters to the editors, call your Senators and Representatives to let them know you support releasing the full funds, talk to your neighbors, write postcards. Local reporters have picked up on this story, help keep it in the headlines until we have access to all the federal funding.
- Call Mary Kiffmeyer (651-296-5655) and urge her to have a real hearing on SF93 so that bill can start moving in case the full funding isn’t restored in the conference committee.
Ultimately, these shenanigans make no sense and are delaying vital upgrades to our elections security systems. This should have been an easy win, but Senate Republicans have made mess of it and left our state vulnerable.
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