Champion of second chances

MSR interviews political powerbroker and Minnesota Senate President Bobby Joe Champion

By Abdi Mohamed

Contributing Writer

t’s been a month since Governor Tim Walz signed a bill to reinstate voting rights to over 50,000 of those who were previously incarcerated, making Minnesota the 22nd state in the country to automatically restore voting rights once an individual is released from prison.

The effort to restore voting rights to ex-offenders has been several years in the making and has risen to the state’s highest court. The Minnesota Supreme Court has been considering the constitutionality of the matter since 2019, when the American Civil Liberties Union in Minnesota argued that the state’s constitution guaranteed some voting rights, and the ban disproportionately affected people of color. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court came to the ruling that the law barring felons from the polls until their sentences were complete was constitutional. The court’s ruling signaled that the issue was now imperative for lawmakers to pass legislation in order for tens of thousands of Minnesotans to have their voting rights restored.

That responsibility fell to Senate President Bobby Joe Champion and his colleagues in the Minnesota State House and Senate, who were willing to take it on. He and other state legis- lators were able to move their respective bills between the House and Senate days later, culminating in the moment when Gov. Walz signed the bill on March 3. The law will go into effect on July 1, when 55,000 Minnesotans will be able to participate, without restrictions, in the most fundamental democratic process—voting.

Senator Champion sees this change as a critical step in the effort to reduce recidivism rates in the state and allow a second chance for individuals to participate in democracy.

“They say if you want people to be successful and reintegrate into society, and you want to decrease recidivism, and you want to make sure that individuals are not going to re-offend, you make sure that they can be a part of the fabric of our democracy,” he said. “They [those who have been incarcerated] said they often felt dehumanized, less than, especially with when it would come to voting. When that day would come and others would have a red sticker that says, ‘I Voted,’ they say their voice was silenced.”

Although this issue is something that impacts people of color, Champion underlines the fact that this is an issue that reaches across a large swath of communities. According to the data Champion and his colleagues worked with, 36 percent of the individuals who are set to have their voting rights restored are from Hennepin and Ramsey counties and 64 percent are from greater Minnesota.

Senator Champion recently spoke to the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder about the work that went into passing this bill and what he sees next on his legislative agenda regarding criminal justice reform.

MSR: What’s the background for this law?

Champion: The file has been affectionately known as “Restore the Vote” ever since I’ve been in the legislature, and as long as I’ve been working on this initiative. Before me, it was Attorney General Ellison. He was working on this along with Linda Higgins, who was my predecessor in the Senate.

We understand that the bedrock of any democracy is to be able to hear an individual’s voice. Your vote is your voice. So there in this statute, Minnesota statute, Section 609.165

■ See CHAMPION on page 5