Good morning, and welcome to Tuesday.
The state Canvassing Board meets this afternoon to certify the results of this month’s election. The board is made up of the secretary of state and four judges and is also set to approve plans for two publicly funded recounts in close state House races in Districts 3A and 3B, should the trailing candidate decide to move forward. Republicans hold narrow leads in both northeastern Minnesota House races, one by just 15 votes. Democrats won all five statewide constitutional offices on November’s ballot and took majorities in both legislative chambers. The parties split the U.S. House races, winning four each.
Top Democratic state leaders say they’re willing to pass a bill in the upcoming legislative session to clear a path for an earlier presidential primary. Gov. Tim Walz and the Legislature’s DFL caucus leaders made the pledge in a letter to key Democratic National Committee members. The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws committee is meeting this week about the 2024 presidential primary schedule. Minnesota is among the states trying to move up to play a pivotal role in choosing future White House nominees. Democrats here say heavy voter engagement and electoral success make Minnesota a strong Midwestern proving ground. Current state law requires signoff from both major parties, but state Republicans have been noncommittal.
For the first time in state history there will be a Black woman in the Minnesota Senate when the new legislative session begins in January–in fact–there will be three Black women senators, all of them from the DFL Party. Erin Maye Quade, Zaynab Mohamed and Clare Oumou Verbeten were all elected earlier this month. Maye Quade says the fact that there are three Black women all coming to the Senate at once makes a big difference. “It means there can be three of us,” she said. “There's three different voices. We can say it three different times. We can be on three different committees at once. And so it amplifies our impact and it makes our ability to effect change three times greater than if we were just alone." All three of the newly elected senators told MPR's Angela Davis that it's important to have Black women represented at the state Capitol for the first time in Minnesota's history. "There's been 165 years where we've created policies and created budgets, and our experiences have never been at the table,” Mohamed said. “And we know good policies come from people who understand the experiences and the impacts of the policies that we do create."
Minneapolis and St. Paul are at the forefront of a national experiment in what happens when low income people are given a few hundred extra dollars a month. As MPR’s Jon Collins reports, during pilot programs in both cities, residents are given $500 dollars a month and can spend it however they want. Guaranteed basic income programs are being tested in small groups across the country as a way to alleviate poverty. Some would like to see the concept expand to include everyone.
The Star Tribune reports:The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a state education licensing board inappropriately denied a teaching license "for immoral character or conduct" to the ex-police officer who killed Philando Castile during a 2016 traffic stop. In its 21-page decision, the appeals court ruled that the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board's basis for denying Jeronimo Yanez a teaching license "must relate to professional morals in the occupation of teaching and indicate that an individual is unfit to teach." Chief Judge Susan L. Segal wrote in the decision that the board must reconsider Yanez's application from Feb. 2020, when he applied for a three-year short-call substitute teaching license. At the time, he had a part-time position teaching Spanish at a private parochial school. However, the appeals court stopped short of instructing the board to grant Yanez his license, directing them only to more narrowly define "immoral character or conduct" within the moral standards of teaching. "The board's decision must focus exclusively on Yanez's conduct and his fitness to be a teacher, not fitness to be a police officer," Segal wrote.
Speaking of the canvassing board, the Associated Press has this out of Arizona: Republican officials in a rural Arizona county refused Monday to certify the 2022 election despite no evidence of anything wrong with the count, a decision that was quickly challenged in court by the state’s top election official. The refusal to certify by Cochise County in southeastern Arizona comes amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject results showing Democrats winning top races. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who narrowly won the race for governor, asked a judge to order county officials to canvass the election, which she said is an obligation under Arizona law. Lawyers representing a Cochise County voter and a group of retirees filed a similar lawsuit Monday, the deadline for counties to approve the official tally of votes, known as the canvass.
And NPR reports in Pennsylvania: In Luzerne County, some 117,000 votes may end up left out of official results after the local board of elections deadlocked along party lines when its fifth member, a Democrat, abstained from voting on whether to certify. Monday is the state's certification deadline for counties that have not received legally valid recount petitions. Pennsylvania's Department of State has contacted the county's officials "to inquire about the board's decision and their intended next steps," spokesperson Ellen Lyon said in an email. The board is set to meet again tomorrow.
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