Southern Minnesota voters will have a chance on Tuesday to determine the final four contenders to serve out the term of Congressman Jim Hagedorn, who died February 17th.
The new member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 1st District will be decided August 9th, but first comes Tuesday’s special primary election, which will narrow the field to one candidate for each political party.
Two marijuana legalization candidates are already set to advance to the August 9th ballot because they were the only contenders for the Legal Marijuana Now Party and the Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party of Minnesota. Tuesday will determine which Democrat and which Republican will join them.
Voters on Tuesday will have to decide whether to weigh in on the Republican Primary Race, where 10 candidates are on the ballot, or the Democratic side, which includes a field of 8. If someone votes both in the Republican and Democratic primary, the ballot will be rejected.
Already, 40,781 absentee ballot applications have been submitted for the special primary election, a figure that includes those initiated by counties for towns and townships with populations of fewer than 400, where voting is done exclusively by mail. Nearly 10,000 ballots had been accepted through Friday.