DFL looks to expand voting rights

ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) – Voting is your duty as an American citizen, but sometimes it can be hard if there is a language barrier or aren’t educated on how to vote. DFL representatives held a townhall today on strengthening the freedom to vote on Sunday.

The key things leaders are pushing for are establishing a secure automatic voter registration, permit pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds, and establish a permanent absentee voting list.

“The vote is just administrative if it doesn’t have the power to move and to make change,” representative Emma Greenman said.

The Democracy for the People Act will possibly be heard and signed into a Minnesota law in April. This act aims to protect and strengthen the freedom to vote by ensuring our democracy is fair, inclusive, and responsive to the needs of Minnesotans across the state.

Lilly Sasse, campaign director for “we choose us,” which is a movement to create a multiracial democracy, has been influential in creating this act.

“While were in the legislative session the most important thing that we can do is to pass pro-democracy reform that work for voters that don’t necessarily align with any one party either but are pro voter policies,” Sasse explained.

The act will require the printing of voting materials in languages. Salah Mohamed thinks this will help expand the number of voters.

“Those redirects try to disfranchise our community and discourage us from voting so this is really personal for us because we have to voice our concerns, and this is the only way we can change in our democracy,” Mohamed said.

In order to make voting more seamless, this act will also prohibit voter intimidation and harassment.

“We believe that our democracy should include as many people as possible, and it should be as accessible as possible for people,” Sasse said.

This act also aims to modernize the campaign finance system to empower voters and bring in more multicultural election judges.

“We want to see more engagement and have also election judges that who look like us, who speak the language and have more diverse judges basically,” Mohamed said.

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