We all remember the long, drawn-out recount of the 2008 Senate race in Minnesota. There were issues of signature matching, spoiled ballots, proper registration… and occasionally just the bizarre (remember ”Lizard People?”).

Overall, Minnesota’s electoral system held up quite well through the counting, recounting, and legal challenges. Nevertheless, a process that lengthy will always expose weaknesses in the system, and Minnesota Democrats are working to fix them before the next major election. They’re starting with the source of much of the contention in 2008 – absentee ballots:

Two years ago, election judges rejected about 12,000 absentee ballots, more than 2,000 of them improperly. Those rejected ballots were a major bone of contention in the recount and court case that ended in Democratic Sen. Al Franken's narrow win over Republican Norm Coleman.

The legislation would reduce the number of absentee ballots that are rejected, said Sen. Katie Sieben, DFL-Newport, the bill's Senate sponsor.

"This new system will be less prone to errors," Sieben said.

In 2008, many ballot challenges stemmed from questions about voters' signatures. The bill would replace the process of matching signatures and instead require absentee voters to provide a driver's license or state identification number, the last four digits of their Social Security number or a statement that the applicant doesn't have any of those numbers.

The bill also would shift the responsibility for counting absentee ballots from the more than 3,000 precinct election judges to "ballot boards" in cities and counties. Those boards would consist of election judges trained to handle absentee ballots.

The law also begins the absentee ballot counting process before Election Day, and it requires officials to notify voters if their ballots have been rejected, giving them an opportunity to vote again.

In Michigan, there are a lot of regulations restricting the types of people who are allowed to vote absentee:

[It] is limited to those 60 and older, or anyone who will be out of town on Election Day, is in jail, has religious reasons for not attending the polls or needs assistance at the polls.

Democratic lawmakers have sponsored legislation to open up the process and make it available to any citizen who requests a ballot by mail, for any reason. And of course, the Republicans have blocked the bill, claiming that they are scared of 'voter fraud.'

Democrats rallied at the state Capitol yesterday, protesting the delay. But the GOP has a four-seat majority in the upper chamber, which of course, makes passage of the legislation unlikely.

The Michigan Senate isn't on the ballot this fall, but in 2010, this chamber is definitely going to be on on our target list.

This issue is a perfect example of why. I don't need to launch into a lecture about civic responsibility and participatory democracy 12 hours before Independence Day.

But I will say this -- Voting rights are a fundamental difference between our party and the other guys. We try to make the process as open as possible, and they try to close it down.

Putting aside all other considerations, that's reason enough for me to vote Democratic year in and year out.