Special elections need tweaking

We have a real gem in Carlton County Auditor Paul Gassert. As an elected official, Gassert shows his dedication to the public in many ways.

So we don’t assign any blame to the auditor for the mail-in ballot debacle in this past special election cycle.

Gassert opened his office last Saturday before the election and kept his office open late on election day to accommodate voters, especially voters who typically mail in their ballots. That’s required by Minnesota law.

But the law also allocates just 35 days between the Governor’s call for a special election and the actual election day. There’s simply not enough time for mail-in ballots to be prepared, mailed to voters, and returned to the auditor’s office for tabulating with all the ballots they receive from regular polling places.

That law needs to be changed. Mail-in ballots are a great idea, in some ways, because staffing polls in low-voter rural areas is expensive. But it’s an absolute disgrace that more than 400 voters were disenfranchised from exercising their most basic civil right — voting — in the primary special election for State Senate District 11. At least that many mail-in voters did not receive their ballots in time to get them mailed back to the auditor’s office to be counted.

Between changes with the Postal Service that route mail through the Twin Cities after the Duluth sorting facility was closed, to the extreme weather (which further delayed the mail) and a federal holiday the day before the primary, we need to fix the special election laws.

One suggestion is a simple: perhaps the county auditor’s office could sort and deliver the mail-in ballots to each local post office, which then can deliver those ballots the next day. Similarly, each local post office can gather the ballots received by election day and the auditor could arrange for someone to pick them up. There is a cost to pay a driver for drop-off and pick-up, but it’s still less expensive than staffing a polling place.

With the dedication of public servants like those in Gassert’s office, some tweaks to the election law, and a little creative thinking, we hope no future election will leave so many voters unheard and votes uncounted.

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