Butler v City of Saint Paul (1) - Laserfiche WebLink

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Butler v. City of Saint Paul, 936 N.W.2d 478 (2019) © 2022 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.3 Postal Service, the secretary of state may also regularly obtain lists from the Department of Public Safety of registered voters who have applied for a driver's license or state identification card with a different address). If a signer did not appear in the SVRS as registered to vote in Saint Paul, the City rejected that signature. Seven days after Butler submitted his petition, the Elections Office sent him a notice of petition insufficiency, informing him that 1,790 of the signatures were invalid and that he had 10 days to file a supplementary petition with the 1,145 additional signatures necessary to meet the statutory requirement. See Minn. Stat. § 410.12, subd. 3 (2018) (allowing a petitioner to submit a supplementary petition within 10 days after receiving notice of an insufficiency). Butler requested that the Elections Office provide a specific reason for the invalidity of each signature. As relevant here, the Elections Office explained that it rejected signatures from those who were not registered to vote in Saint Paul.1 Butler did not file a supplementary petition within 10 days. Instead, he filed a petition in Ramsey County District Court under Minn. Stat. § 204B.44. Under section 204B.44, a party may file a petition with the district court to correct “any wrongful act, omission, or error of any ... municipal clerk ... or any other individual charged with any duty concerning an election.” Minn. Stat. § 204B.44(a)(4). Butler asserted that the City erred by relying on the SVRS to invalidate signatures and in refusing to put his proposed charter amendment before the voters.2 The parties engaged in discovery concerning the invalidated signatures. Following this process, the City reduced the number of rejected signatures to 1,699, which left Butler's petition 1,054 signatures short of the required 7,011 signatures.3 Both parties then moved for summary judgment. The City argued that it was entitled to summary judgment because Butler's petition did not meet the statutory threshold of 7,011 signatures. For his part, Butler argued that the City rejected too many signatures. With his motion, Butler included an affidavit stating that the City improperly rejected at least 1,127 signatures. Butler argued that these signatures should not have been rejected because the signers lived in Saint Paul based on his examination of public-information voter lists provided by the secretary of state, screenshots from the SVRS disclosed by the City during discovery, Ramsey County property records, and Minnesota marriage *481 certificates. And he argued that the City had incorrectly invalidated these 1,127 signatures because the signers were listed on Saint Paul's voter-registration lists when they signed the petition. The district court determined that Butler had produced “some record evidence” that 980 of the rejected signatures were from residents of Saint Paul who were registered voters eligible to vote at the time they signed the petition or at the time the petition was submitted to the City. But even when those 980 signatures were added to the 5,957 signatures already accepted by the City, the district court concluded that the petition was still 74 signatures short of the five-percent statutory threshold. Butler also argued that the City had wrongfully rejected 147 signatures because it had relied on the SVRS—rather than the addresses listed on the petition—to verify whether the signers were registered to vote in Saint Paul. If these 147 signatures were accepted, Butler argued, his petition would contain more than the 7,011 signatures required. The district court rejected this argument, determining that Butler had produced no evidence to support the assertion that the signers were residents of Saint Paul, other than a Saint Paul address listed on the petition.4 Concluding that no genuine dispute of material fact existed as to whether the City erred in rejecting the signatures, the district court granted summary judgment for the City. Butler appealed, and the court of appeals affirmed the district court. Butler v. City of Saint Paul, 923 N.W.2d 43, 51 (Minn. App. 2019). Although Butler had shown a difference between the information on the petition and the information included in the SVRS, the court of appeals determined that he failed to produce admissible evidence to suggest “that this difference amounts to an error, omission, or wrongful act by election officials.” Id. We granted Butler's petition for review. ANALYSIS [1]This case comes to us on appeal from the district court's entry of summary judgment for the City, and our review is de novo. Riverview Muir Doran, LLC v. JADT Dev. Grp., LLC, 790 N.W.2d 167, 170 (Minn. 2010) (explaining that we review the grant of summary judgment de novo). Butler