Eligibility to vote in Minnesota is something that's found in the Minnesota Constitution.
You have to be 18 years old, you have to be a citizen of the United States, you have to be a resident of the state of Minnesota, and you must no longer be serving a felony sentence.
Those are the big four things, all put in our state constitution, that make a person eligible to vote.
A landmark court case a few years ago in Minnesota made clear what the rule now is.
The rule is that unless a court otherwise says so, specifically and in an order of the court, someone who is under guardianship status does have the right to vote in Minnesota.
They have it unless a specific court in a specific way says they don't have it.
So even under guardianship, there is that prospect.
Now, how a person votes and how a person under guardianship can get across what they want to do in the polling place, that is a--an area where there aren't a lot of formal guardrails.
That really is up to the person who that guardian--the person under guardianship works with, that guardian, to determine how to effectuate the meaning of that person's preference.
That's a trickier issue, no question about it.
But that's really left to those individual relationships.
But that person absolutely does have the right to vote in Minnesota.
It's important in our office and it's important statewide to make sure that every eligible voter knows that they are eligible to vote.
And that means letting them know what the rules of the road are, whether it's by virtue of a disability, whether it's by virtue of living in another state, whether it's by virtue of being in the military or some other status, it's very important to let every eligible voter know the pathway to making that vote real and actually participating.
Our office is in the position of reminding all state agencies of all kinds of their obligation under state law.
Minnesota state law says that all state agencies, in their interactions with the public, must meet a certain minimum standard of making available or making known to the people that they interact with their rights and how it is that they can register to vote and actually vote.