More than 6,000 Minnesotans newly eligible to vote cast their ballots last year after lawmakers expanded voting rights to residents on felony parole and probation.
Advocates, lawmakers and other prominent elected officials, including Attorney General Keith Ellison and Secretary of State Steve Simon, who pushed for the change, celebrated that figure as a win in a Monday morning news conference at the State Capitol.
“Empowering, resourcing and centering justice-impacted people to inform, inspire and educate each other is a vital step to creating lasting change in our democracy,” said Antonio Williams, executive director of T.O.N.E. U.P., a nonprofit that supports people as they leave prison and re-enter their communities.
The law was some two decades in the making and required “relentless organizing and advocacy and storytelling,” said HwaJeong Kim, executive director of Minnesota Voice, a voting and civic engagement nonprofit. Gov. Tim Walz signed the bill into law in 2023 and it survived a legal challenge that made its way to the state Supreme Court last year.
Backers credited work done by Minnesota Voice and other groups in pushing voting numbers higher than initially expected. Minnesota Voice and its partners sent more than 90,000 mailers, made nearly 8,000 phone calls and knocked on more than 5,000 doors.
“We knew we couldn’t just pass a law and walk away and spike the football,” said Simon, who personally toured prisons across Minnesota to spread the word.
State officials initially estimated the law made at least 55,000 Minnesotans newly eligible to vote. Minnesota Voice said they started with a list of about 60,000 records, then cleaned the data and narrowed it to a list of people with a last-known address in the state.
Of the remaining 31,033 people, 6,096, or about 20%, cast a ballot in the 2024 general election.
