Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon visited New Ulm Thursday to discuss new election laws and dispel misinformation about election integrity.
NEW ULM – With the Nov. 5 general election less than 90 days away, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon visited the New Ulm Public Library Thursday to give an update on new voting laws and dispel misinformation.
“We are in the democracy business,” Simon said in describing the work of the Secretary of State Office.
He said the Secretary of State’s office is in charge of overseeing the Minnesota election system but clarified his office was not responsible for counting votes.
“That’s not what we do, that’s nothing we’ve ever done,” Simon said. “All the ballot counting, all the math happens at the local level. That happens in towns, in cities and counties all across Minnesota.”
The reason ballot counting is done at the local level is to have a decentralized system to avoid pinch points.
The Secretary of State’s office does certify election tabulation equipment before the election and helps certify the results. This includes post-election audits and reviews to provide a second layer of election security.
Unfortunately, the Secretary of State office has recently been forced to confront disinformation about the office and other voting laws.
Simon said his greatest worry about the election is the cloud of disinformation hanging over the election. He said it was fine to disagree or criticize him and his office, but he drew the line at purposely spreading information known to be incorrect.
Recently false information was circulating that the Secretary of State’s office in Minnesota and other states were secretly working to spike the vote totals for certain candidates.
“We don’t count votes,” Simon said. “I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. We don’t touch ballots. That’s not a disagreement, that’s just a total misstatement of facts.”
Social media has caused some misinformation to proliferate.
A few weeks ago an artificially intelligent chatbot operating on “X” (formally known as Twitter) spread false information about election laws in Minnesota and other states. A national association of SOS offices reached out to X asking to fix this misinformation, but no action has been taken by the social media site to correct the error.
Earlier this week, another user on X made an allegation that election officials in Minnesota are tracking people by political parties to throw out certain ballots.
“We don’t have party registration in Minnesota,” Simon said. “How would anyone track that?”
Simon said pushing something was probably false, was not a simple disagreement and for the good of the country people needed to lead with the truth and identify false information.
Simon said his hope for the next election is to avoid drama about the validity of the results. He said once the election happens and the results come out, Americans have the right to challenge those results. However, once the court process is over, the outcome needs to be accepted.
“That’s important for us as a country,” he said. “Of course, you can challenge the result. Bring your evidence, but you don’t have any evidence or the court says it is insufficient, it has to end.”
Another hope Simon had for the next election was high voter turnout.
“In Minnesota, we love to vote,” he said. The state traditionally has among the highest voter participation in the country.
Simon credited Minnesota’s strong voting turnout to good laws. He said these laws were put in the book by both political parties. He believed the secret to designing a great election system was to have great access and great security.
“You don’t want [voting] to be a hassle, it shouldn’t be an obstacle course,” he said “but you only want eligible voters and no one else to take advantage of that accessibility.”
In 2023, there were several voting reforms. Simon said all the reforms were non-partisan in origins and non-partisan in effect.
The first change was automatic voter registration. For over 30 years, whenever a Minnesotan renewed a driver’s license, a box could be checked to register the driver to vote. Simon said that’s because the information required to renew a driver’s license is the same as to register to vote. The new automatic voter registration law removes the check box. As long as a person applying for a driver’s license proves they are eligible to vote, it will be assumed a person wants to vote.
The benefit of the system is getting more people to register, but it also makes the voter rolls cleaner and more accurate. Simon said many of the people who normally register to vote on election day, will already be registered.
Simon said automatic voting registration only happens if a person supplies proof of citizenship. Proof of citizenship could include passports, naturalization papers, or birth certificates. If none of these three documents is provided, that person will not be automatically registered to vote. This prevents illegal aliens from being registered.
Another new law is pre-registration for high-schoolers. This allows 16- and 17-year-olds to fill out voter registration information early. When the student turns 18 they will be automatically registered.
“If you can get a young person to vote the first time they’re eligible they are more likely to make it a life-long habit,” Simon said.
The third new voting law restored the freedom to vote for people who left prison. People in prison cannot vote, but once they have left prison their voting rights are returned. Previously, people out of prison, but on probation were not allowed to vote. The passage of this law returned the right to vote for 55,000 Minnesotans.
Simon said recently the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in favor of the freedom to vote law, which was challenged as unconstitutional.
Simon said he frequently gets questions about voting security regarding mail-in ballots. Many people ask how the state can prevent a person from stealing blank ballots from a mailbox.
He explained there are three security measures in place to prevent this. First, when ordering an absentee ballot, the voter must provide some form of personal information, like a driver’s license number or social security number. That information must be provided when the ballot is mailed back in addition to a voter’s signature and a witness’s signature.
A mail ballot thief would need to know the exact form of personally identifying information used to order the ballot and then forge two separate signatures.
“In nine years of doing the job I can’t recall a case of this kind of voter fraud,” he said. “There are triple layers of security.”
For any additional questions or concerns about elections, Simon said he could be contacted at steve.simon@state.mn.us