MINNEAPOLIS — With two days left until Election Day, Secretary of State Steve Simon is weighing in on what voters can expect going forward. This comes after record breaking voter turnouts across the state.
“As of today, it's an astonishingly high 1,684,817,” he said. “That absolutely shatters any previous records."
There are still around 293,000 outstanding absentee ballots, as of Nov. 1, Simon said.
He's advising people who still have ballots to hand deliver it to your county election office or designated dropbox by 3 p.m. on Nov. 3.
"If someone has an absentee ballot in hand or it's been sitting on your coffee table, for a couple of weeks or more than that, don't mail it in,” he said.
Yesterday, the Secretary of State's office issued a notice on social media saying they were taking the online website and online voting tools offline to work on hardware issues. “This wasn't the result of any malicious action, no evidence of any hack, it didn't impact any voters ability to vote, because we always have paper backups,” he said.
After a federal court of appeals decision last week ruled all absentee ballots received after 8 p.m. on Election Day should be set aside, Sec. Simon says he's focusing on keeping voters informed. “I disagree with the decision,” he said. “I think it was wrongly decided, there will be time later to catalogue the disagreement."
Now, he's encouraging voters to drop off their ballots at a designated location. He also has advice for those coming out to long lines on Election Day. “If you're in line by 8 p.m., you must be given the right to vote and you will be," he said.