NORTH MANKATO — Big changes are looming for the 2010 election in Minnesota, at least for the 10 to 20 percent who vote in the primary election, the nearly 10 percent of voters who cast absentee ballots, and the tiny percentage who want to run for office.

As for everybody else, the campaign season will simply seem a little longer.

“They’ll see signs a little earlier,” Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said of the candidate billboards and lawn signs.

Many of the modifications to Minnesota election law came out of the 2008 election — which became the longest in state history with the Norm Coleman-Al Franken U.S. Senate seat recount and court battle.

“2008 gave us a lot to think about and learn from,” Ritchie told area township officials during their annual meeting Wednesday in North Mankato.

The resulting rewriting of state election laws matters to townships because they oversee about half of the precincts in Minnesota, and much of Ritchie’s talk focused on the details of running a polling place.

After the meeting, Ritchie spelled out areas where more typical Minnesotans will notice the changes.

The primary election, where two or more candidates from a party are narrowed to one finalist for each race on the ballot, will now be in August. For 2010, it’s Aug. 10 — more than a month sooner than under the old law.

The major reason for moving up the date was the desire to allow more time to get ballots to overseas voters, especially soldiers stationed in other parts of the world. With a September primary, it was difficult to get absentee ballots printed, sent to military bases and returned by the November general election.

That was particularly true in the event of a recount in a primary election — something that happened with a judicial race in 2008. The state canvassing board was still completing its work the day before the general election ballots were due at the printer.

The earlier primary election means some Minnesotans will need to take voting into account when preparing for traditional August vacations at the lake. The obvious answer is to vote by absentee ballot, something a growing number of Minnesotans already were doing.

The new election law changes that process in a positive way, Ritchie said. The paperwork accompanying the ballot will be more logical and less cumbersome — something the old instructions weren’t, as evidenced by the confusion exposed by the Coleman-Franken post-election legal fight.

Usability experts and focus groups were employed to simplify the instructions on the absentee ballot envelope, and the improvement is striking when the new and old are compared, he said.

“You look at them and say, ‘Uh, why didn’t we do this before?’” Ritchie said.

Absentee voters in the primary will be able to get ballots as early as June 25 and for the general election by mid-September, an indication of how the timeline for the 2010 election is getting pushed earlier into the year.

That will be of particular concern for potential candidates who are still deciding whether to take the plunge because the filing period will end June  1. That deadline is more than a month earlier than under existing law.

The early primary and filing period will probably make a noticeable difference even for people who don’t run for office or vote until Nov. 2 — if at all. Along with the lawn signs, TV ads might appear a couple of months sooner in contested primary races.

It would have begun even sooner if some people — who called for a June primary election — had their way. That idea was opposed by some lawmakers who didn’t like the idea of potentially facing an election in June when they’d be stuck in St. Paul for the legislative session through much of May.

But a June primary also was problematic for minor party candidates and independents, who have to generate signatures on a petition to get on the ballot, Ritchie said. The timeline for submitting those petitions would have put candidates on street corners in the middle of a Minnesota winter.

That’s what makes changes in election law tricky and infrequent, he said. Every change has ramifications which can be perceived as giving advantage or disadvantage to one party or another. On top of that, the lawmakers and governor who have to approve the changes won their seats under the existing rules.

“People say, ‘I got elected under this system, I’m not so sure (about changing it),’” he said.

In this case they were. The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.