State Shutdown Could Complicate City Election

A state shutdown on July 1 could complicate an August primary election in St. Louis Park, as well as general elections in the fall, according to reports made to the Hennepin County Board Thursday. 

Jill Alverson, Hennepin County's director of taxpayer services, said it's expected that the responsibility for voting services currently held by the state would fall to the counties if the shutdown happens. That means that counties would be responsible for maintaining and updating voter rolls. 

St. Louis Park must hold its primary on Aug. 9, according to state law. The primary is for the "at-large B" spot on the City Council because three people are running.

Counties also wouldn't be able to immediately confirm voters' registrations, meaning a backlog could be in place when the state comes back online. A shutdown would also put pressure on counties, which will be cash-strapped as it is, to pay for manual data entry for all this new information. 

Alverson said the counties still don't know for certain whether the Secretary of State's voting services will be declared "essential" in a court ruling expected today. But Hennepin County didn't submit voting services to the state as an essential service. 

Voters with expired IDs would be able to vote with their expired ID and a utility bill, staff said. 

Commissioner Peter McLaughlin questioned why voting wasn't considered an essential service by the county attorneys.

“This is a bigger threat to the integrity of the election system than the argument that’s been made for photo ID,” McLaughlin said during the Thursday briefing.

St. Louis Park city spokesman Jamie Zwilling said the biggest impact of all this locally would likely be on absentee voting, as the state database—used to look up registration of voters and enter absentee voter data—would not be available, meaning some people might need need to re-register. Zwilling said the plan in case of a state shutdown is to use a spreadsheet prepared by the county, then hand-enter new voter information daily, which shouldn't be a big deal because of the small number of absentee voters in St. Louis Park.

Other parts of the election will see little to no impact, Zwilling said. Voting rosters will be handled by the county, which could actually work better for the city because the county can print them closer to election day, meaning more primary absentee voters will be included on the lists.

The state election reporting system wouldn't be available in the event of a shutdown, but Zwilling said St. Louis Park can use its own website to immediately show results, rather than linking to the state.

"Everybody will be able to vote on election day, and we will be able to quickly and accurately report the results," the spokesman said.