Hon. Mike Freiberg
Chair, House Committee on Elections Finance and Policy
200 State Office Building
St. Paul, MN 55155
Dear Chairman Freiberg and Members of the Committee:
On behalf of the Fair Elections Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to removingbarriers to registration and voting through advocacy and impact litigation, and the Center’s Campus Vote Project, a national organization to educate and engage young voters on voting rights issues and institutionalize civic engagement at university and college campuses, we write to express our support for HF 3447; however, we urge you to consider adopting language that would permit a postsecondary institution’s student governing body to file a request for a temporary voting location on their campus.
Students often face significant hurdles to participating in democracy. Logistical and systemic barriers unique to student and young voters, coupled with a lack of access to and awareness of information regarding registering and voting, often make civic participation significantly more difficult for this demographic. For example, college-aged people are some of the least likely to own a car and many do not have driver’s licenses at all.1 This—in addition to their unfamiliarity with community locations outside of campus—can make it very difficult for them to reach off-campus voting sites, particularly in jurisdictions that lack reliable public transportation options.
HF 3447 as proposed would be an important step toward reducing these barriers for student voters by making it possible for postsecondary institutions to request county auditors establish on-campus temporary voting locations. This will give agency to school administrators—who better understand the needs of their student body—to seek out more accessible opportunities to vote for their own campus community.
Importantly, creating temporary locations on campuses of postsecondary institutions does not only benefit students. For example, in addition to the number of school faculty and staff on-campus polling locations could serve, people with disabilities may also benefit from county auditors being able to establish additional temporary polling locations on postsecondary institution campuses. Accessibility, including sufficient parking and accessible infrastructure, is vital to increasing participation in elections among voters with disabilities. Postsecondary institutions can often provide modernized, ADA
compliant facilities, making them helpful voting locations in communities with few accessible options, benefitting voters beyond just the student population. Although we support this bill in its current form, we would recommend the following amendment:
“(c) At the request of a postsecondary institution in the county, or if a postsecondary institution’s student governing body files a request, the county auditor must establish an additional polling place for at least one day on the institution’s campus at a location that is agreed upon by the institution or the institution’s student governing body and the county auditor and that
is accessible to the public.”
This addition will empower representatives of the student body on each campus to request a temporary voting location on behalf of their peers, rather than being reliant on campus administrators to request one.
HF 3447, along with the recommended language, will be an important measure to increase and encourage civic participation among college students in Minnesota. Making voting more accessible to communities that face significant barriers to voting is crucial to make our democracy more representative of the people that it serves. If you would like further information or have any questions,
please contact feel free to contact me at the email address below.
Sincerely,
Patrick Williamson
Counsel
Fair Elections Center
1825 K St. NW, Ste. 701
Washington, DC 20006
pwilliamson@fairelection.codpixels.com
