Court Opinion

ID: 9723596
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:22:36.480804+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:10:11.195774
License: Public Domain

PAGE, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
The right to vote is protected in more than the initial allocation of the franchise. Equal protection applies as well to the manner of its exercise. Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another.
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 104-05, 121 S.Ct. 525,148 L.Ed.2d 388 (2000).
While I concur in the court’s reasoning and the result reached with respect to whether the prohibition against mailing supplemental ballots violates the equal protection rights of voters requesting replacement ballots, I respectfully dissent from the court’s decision relating to that part of Minn.Stat. § 204B.41 which provides that “[a]bsentee ballots that have been mailed prior to the preparation of official supplemental ballots shall be counted in the same manner as if the vacancy had not occurred.”
I dissent because the issue is not properly before the court for resolution and therefore should not be addressed. At oral argument, petitioners for the first time requested that the court issue an order requiring that no votes for United States Senator east on regular absentee ballots be counted. Petitioners argued that counting regular absentee ballots only for candidates other than Senator Well-stone raised due process and equal protection concerns. That issue was not raised in the parties’ petition or argued in any party’s memorandum. Moreover, in raising this issue at oral argument, petitioners did not provide any legal authority in support of their position. The court, nonetheless, addresses the issue. Because the issue was not properly raised, briefed, or argued, it should not be addressed. See Morrow v. LaFleur, 590 N.W.2d 787, 796 n. 15 (Minn.1999) (declining to address an issue that was not briefed by the parties and only addressed at oral argument).
I also dissent because the court’s decision on the merits goes too far. Although the court may be correct in its conclusion that the remedy sought by petitioners is not proper, the proper remedy cannot be one in which some voters must necessarily be disenfranchised. Implicit in the court’s resolution is the suggestion that there is no constitutional problem with the “shall be counted in the same manner” language of Minn.Stat. § 204B.41. In fact, there are fundamental problems with allowing the *736votes for United States Senator on some regular absentee ballots to be counted while not counting others. See Bush, 531 U.S. at 104-05, 121 S.Ct. 525.
While not properly before the court, the issue as raised presents a fundamental constitutional question that reaches to the very core of democracy: the right of citizens to have their votes counted. Yet the court, ignoring this question, resolves these constitutional concerns without any citation to authority or law. These concerns should not have been so casually raised nor so cavalierly dismissed.
Therefore, I concur in part and dissent in part.