Ritchie Targets Voting Barriers
New Secretary of State
Pledges to Continue his Work on Eliminating Election Day Obstacles
for People with Disabilities
by Mai Thor and Beth Fraser
Ever since the November elections,
Mark Ritchie, the newly elected Secretary of State of Minnesota,
has been anxious for his term to start on January 2nd. “I can’t
wait to begin working to further improve our state’s election
system,” stated Ritchie.
Ritchie noted that although Minnesota
has led the country in voter turnout for some time, there is still
room for improvement. He pointed out that Minnesotans with disabilities
are 20% less likely to vote than other eligible citizens. “The staff of the Secretary of
State’s office will work closely with advocates within the
disability community to change this,” pledged Ritchie.
Ritchie’s campaign focused on removing remaining barriers
that keep people from voting, including obstacles created by a lack
of information. In October, four weeks before he was even elected,
Ritchie instructed his staff to contact over 1,500 residential facilities,
including group homes, battered women’s shelters, homeless
shelters and nursing homes, to inform them about new laws that affected
their residents’ voting rights. “We realized that a deadline
for taking action was approaching, and no one had told the residential
facilities about the steps they needed to take,” Ritchie explained. “Even
though it meant diverting resources away from winning the campaign,
we did it because it was the right thing to do. Now that I’m
the Secretary of State, I can make sure that my office educates residential
facilities about their options, so this won’t be an issue again.”
Ritchie has spent the last
20 years working for charitable organizations and is known for his
collaborative work style. “The key is getting input from all
of the stakeholders when making changes. Just because I’ll
be the chief elections official in the state, doesn’t mean
that I’m the expert
on the challenges facing special populations or the procedures used
at the local level. I need to hear from these groups about what’s
needed and what will work,” Ritchie stated. In addition to
the Secretary of State’s office, county, city, school board,
and township officials are all involved in running elections in Minnesota.
Ritchie plans to examine current
election procedures to see what needs to be changed. One focus
will be reviewing how the AutoMarks worked; these new, accessible
ballot-marking machines were used for the first time in last fall’s elections. One study group found
that there were issues with the reliability of the machines, the
slow speed at which they operated, and the election judges’ lack
of familiarity with the machines. “It seems clear that we will
need to work with the manufacturer and programmers to see what can
be done about how these machines work, and to bolster the training
on how to use the machines for many election judges,” explained
Ritchie.
“We also need to improve training for local elections officials
and election judges about the voting rights of people under guardianship,” Ritchie
stated. In recent years, Minnesota state law changed so that people
under guardianship retain their right to vote, unless a court has
specifically revoked it. Nevertheless, some election judges were
not aware of the change and prevented people under guardianship from
voting. Ritchie promised, “I will see to it that election judges
and other poll workers understand this [new law] fully, so that people
under guardianship will no longer have to worry about their right
to vote needlessly being challenged.”
Ritchie has a lot that he
wants to accomplish in the next four years, but instead of overwhelming
him, he seems to be energized by it. “I’m
excited. Ensuring that people have a say in how their government
is run is critical to a well-functioning democracy. I’m looking
forward to getting into office and digging in.” ![]()
