Good morning, and welcome to what some consider the last Monday of summer.
Convicted felons in Minnesota can now vote as soon as their incarceration ends. MPR’s Brian Bakst took a look at what the change might mean: Minnesota is among the latest states — New Mexico passed a similar law this year — to speed up restoration of voting eligibility to the formerly incarcerated and others with felony records, though other states have restricted access. The law change in Minnesota is estimated to affect more than 55,000 people still serving some stage of a sentence outside a jail or prison wall. The challenge is to get them to use those voting rights. Robert Clark, due to leave Stillwater in October on his 34th birthday, said he'll definitely be signing up to vote. "I wanted people to understand that we have a voice and it's not just because we've been to prison that we're bad people and they're going to count us out," Clark said after meeting with Secretary of State Steve Simon at Stillwater Prison. Derek Burgess, 34, is also on the cusp of freedom. He volunteered to fellow inmates and the visitors in suits that he's also motivated to vote. "This is going to get me in trouble," Burgess said. "I'm a Trump supporter and my significant other is a Democrat. You feel me? And now I can vote when I get out in the next couple of weeks?" "Yes," Simon answered.
University of St. Thomas constitutional law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen says a jury needn’t find former President Donald Trump guilty to bar him from serving a second term. Paulsen and University of Chicago professor William Baude argue the 14th Amendment to the Constitution bars anyone from being president who engaged in an insurrection, and they say Trump has done that. Paulsen told MPR’s Tom Crann that the language enacted after the Civil War is still in effect, and that it can be tested apart from the other legal proceedings against Trump, “If someone is running for an office for which they're disqualified, a variety of state and local election officials have to make a determination of whether they can be put on the ballot the first place,” Paulsen said. “You can expect that whatever a state secretary of state determines in terms of ballot eligibility, it'll be contested by one side or the other and eventually wind up in court.”
Are Minnesotans likely to seek out a third party candidate if next year’s presidential race is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump? Politico paid a visit to the state to try to find out: Long before the rise of wrestler-turned-Gov. Jesse Ventura and his Independence Party, Minnesota is where the old Farmer-Labor Party made its run as one of the most successful third-party movements in American history, before merging with Democrats in the 1940s. (In recognition of that history, the Democratic party here is still called the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party.) It’s the state where voters sent a comedian to the U.S. Senate, and where Sen. Bernie Sanders, the progressive icon, won the state’s Democratic caucuses in 2016 with more than 60 percent of the vote. “Minnesota’s had like a century-long populism,” said Larry Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist who has studied third parties. “Jesse Ventura did great here. [Ross] Perot did great here. [Jill] Stein did better here than elsewhere. There is definitely that streak.”
The Minnesota Legislature took a tiny step toward making it easier to get permits to build large wind and solar projects. MinnPost had the story: Lawmakers voted to make it somewhat easier for renewable power developers to build in Minnesota, specifically by exempting certain large wind and solar projects from getting what’s known as a “Certificate of Need.” That’s not an earthquake of a change, according to supporters. But it does shorten part of the regulatory road. “It cuts basically like 14 or 16 months, depending on the project, off the permitting process,” said Madelyn Smerillo, senior policy associate for Clean Grid Alliance, a renewable energy trade group that championed the policy change. The current Certificate of Need “makes Minnesota less competitive with surrounding states,” she said. Across the country, regulators, politicians and the energy industry have grappled with the idea of altering permitting and review for all sorts of energy projects — and other industrial development like mining — while balancing environmental review and other scrutiny. In Minnesota, that conversation has grown in recent years. As industry pushes for what they see as a more efficient process on the energy front, wind and solar projects sometimes face backlash from those who live where the projects would be built.
Angling on frozen Minnesota lakes is a popular winter sport, but tens of thousands of anglers spending a day or a weekend on a lake creates a perennial trash problem. MPR’s Dan Gunderson reports a new law passed this year by the state Legislature makes it easier to fine those who dump trash and waste on the ice. Mike Hirst with the Lake of the Woods Soil and Water Conservation District has been working to educate anglers for more than a decade through the Keep It Clean initiative. He said many people think their trash doesn’t make a difference. “But you multiply that by the 10,000 people that could be on there on a busy weekend and that can really add up,” Hirst said. The Keep It Clean organization started on Lake of the Woods and spread to Upper Red Lake and Mille Lacs Lake. The initiative has taken off in the past year with more than 50 Minnesota lakes involved in the educational campaign. | 