The Minnesota Senate State Government Finance & Policy & Elections Committee will hear SF 752 on Thursday, February 20, at 1 p.m. This is one of the two identical bills that improves ballot access. The other such bill is HF 708. Both bills were introduced in January 2019, and until now neither of them has made any headway.

The bills cut the number of signatures on the party petition from 5% of the last vote cast (over 100,000) to exactly 20,000. They cut the vote test for a party from 5% to 1%. They delete the language that says a signer can’t sign an independent candidate petition if the signer expects to vote for the same office in the primary. They cut the number of signatures for independent candidates for the legislature from 500, to 400 for State Senate and 200 for State Representative. In special elections the normal number of signatures is halved.

The bills also give a party the ability to keep candidates out of the primary if the party feels the candidate is not a member. The State Supreme Court of Minnesota also implicitly seemed to approve of this idea on January 9, when he ruled that if the Republican Party doesn’t want Rocky De La Fuente on its presidential primary ballot, then the party is free to exclude him and leave President Donald Trump as the only name. That case is De La Fuente v Simon, A19-1994. The Court still hasn’t issued the full opinion explaining the rationale for its decision.