The Minnesota Supreme Court has rejected a request from several television stations to make public “sealed” absentee ballots that were never counted during the 2008 Senate election.
KSTP-TV (Channel 5) in the Twin Cities, WDIO-TV (Channel 10) in Duluth, and other Hubbard Broadcasting-owned stations sent letters to each Minnesota county to try to get access to the ballots from the election, which Al Franken won 312 votes.
Ramsey County refused, so the TV stations sued. The case eventually found its way to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which ruled last week that the ballots are to remain sealed from public view.
To reach the ruling, the court took a highly literal interpretation of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, a law that presumes government data are public subject to numerous exceptions. Among those exceptions are “sealed absentee ballots prior to opening by an election judge.”
The TV stations argued that such a ruling would constitute a “simplistically literal” interpretation of the Data Practices Act, which is aimed toward making data public and not private. However, as frequently occurs in cases of this type, the supreme court essentially threw the issue toward the legislature, which enacted the law in the first place. If the legislature wants to change the law, it can.
Had the ballots been made public, it certainly is possible that Norm Coleman and not Al Franken could have emerged as the “real” winner. As it stands, Minnesotans are left to guess.
