At the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party convention in Duluth last month, 1076 delegates cast ballots related to the party’s 2014-15 action agenda. Resolutions ranged from taxes to veterans to recreational cannabis.
This last one needed 619 votes to pass, but ended up with 603, according to tally takers. In other words, the activists who guide policy for the DFL — the party that currently controls the House, the Senate and the governor’s office — were 16 votes shy of making recreational cannabis a legislative priority for the next two years. That comes out to a mere 1.5 percent.