Republicans and Democrats in Minnesota held party caucuses last week, featuring straw polls in the governor’s race. Grassroots politics!
“Caucus attendees can also vote on potential changes to the party’s platform,” The Minnesota Reformer informed readers before the big night, reporting afterwards that caucusgoers “approved a bevy of resolutions to alter the DFL’s party platform, including abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, defunding the Department of Homeland Security and assuring people have access to gender-affirming care.”
Then I discovered that Democrats — called the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) in Minnesota — allow noncitizens to participate and vote in their caucuses.
Four years ago, a three-judge appeals court panel ruled that the “criminal penalties of Minnesota Statutes … which punish unlawful voting as a felony, do not apply to voting in precinct caucuses.”
That led then-DFL Party Chair Ken Martin to announce: “Our party can finally live its values.” Responding to reporters, Martin had explained at the time that “we are governed under our own First Amendment freedom of association rights and we can determine whoever we want to participate in the party.”
Okay. “Immigrants who aren’t U.S. citizens can caucus and become convention delegates,” a change approved unanimously by the party’s executive committee, according to Minnesota Public Radio News.
“By opening the front door to historically excluded neighbors,” argued Emilia Gonzalez Avalos, a noncitizen union organizer from Mexico, the DFL is “making sure that those affected by the issues in our platforms have a say in the process and can grasp power to truly hold our own side accountable to our shared vision.”
There are many things in my house, upon which I don’t let my neighbors vote. The DFL is free to do as it wishes in its own elections.* We are free to take note.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* This from the Minnesota Reformer is interesting: “As the Office of Secretary of State makes clear, these are party-run functions, but the results of the straw polls will be posted on the Secretary of State’s website.” If state law doesn’t apply because the parties are private associations, then why is the Secretary expending resources to report the votes?
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One reply on “Values of the DFL”
Okay, so the DFL skews away from its actual base of legal voters, who in-turn skew away from the center-of-mass of public opinion. That seems like good news for Republicans, if elections conform to law.
“Progressives”, in bringing as much as possible within the state (alla Mussolini) under the guise of democratization, have foisted upon us a weird order in which political parties are somehow both private associations and agents of the state. (I remember the discomfort of officers of the Libertarian Party of Ohio when they discovered that such agency came with regular ballot status.) Of course, the state of Minnesota gives its favored party the prerogatives of each.