Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signs the "Democracy for the People Act" on May 5, 2023, in St. Paul, Minn. Steve Karnowski/AP.
Kamala Harris’ decision to pick Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday coincided with the 59th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
It was a fitting coincidence—Minnesota has long ranked at the top of the country in voter turnout, pioneering pro-voter reforms like Election Day registration, and as governor Walz signed bill after bill expanding access to the ballot and safeguarding the right to vote.
“Governor Walz made Minnesota a national model for protecting our democracy and the freedom to vote,” Sean Eldridge, president of Stand Up America, a progressive advocacy group, said on Tuesday morning.
In May 2023, after Minnesota elected a Democratic legislature in the 2022 midterms, Walz signed the “Democracy for the People Act,” which enacted automatic voter registration at state agencies, established a permanent list for mail-in ballots, allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, and strengthened penalties against voter intimidation.
“Minnesota consistently leads the nation in voter turnout, and we plan to keep it that way,” Walz said at the time. “We know that the more people vote, the more representative our state government can be. This bill will strengthen our democracy, allow future voters to get engaged early, and keep our campaigns honest and fair.”
Just a month later, Walz signed another bill into law that restored voting rights to more than 50,000 Minnesotans on parole, probation, or community release due to felony convictions.
That same year, Walz also signed several other notable democracy reforms, including expanding early voting and committing to enroll Minnesota in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is an agreement among states to pledge their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote and bypass the Electoral College if enough states join to reach the 270 votes necessary to decide the presidency.
Walz didn’t stop there. In May 2024, he signed another package of pro-voter reforms, incentivizing college campuses to host polling places, ending prison gerrymandering so that incarcerated people are counted where they last resided for purposes of representation rather than where they are imprisoned, and creating a Minnesota Voting Rights Act. The state-level Voting Rights Act is an attempt to counteract the gutting of the VRA by the US Supreme Court and the conservative-dominated lower courts by prohibiting voter suppression and vote dilution and allowing private citizens to sue if their voting rights are challenged.
Walz’s record on voting rights is a stark contrast to Donald Trump’s VP pick, J.D. Vance, who said he would not have certified the 2020 election and has spread lies about the presidential result, falsely claiming that “there were certainly people voting illegally on a large-scale basis.”
Walz’s advocacy for democracy reform meshes well with Harris, who was the Biden administration’s point person on voting rights legislation and has pledged on the campaign trail to protect “the freedom to vote” and sign bills restoring the VRA and ensuring federal voting rights protections.
Bryan Sells, a voting rights lawyer in Georgia, wrote on X on Tuesday that “Harris-Walz is easily the most pro-voting-rights ticket in my lifetime.”
