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Vote sign
A man holds a sign that says “VOTE” outside Mankato Regional Airport as President Donald Trump makes a campaign stop on August 17, 2020.
It’s a presidential election year (and a pandemic!), and you know what that means—the sitting president is sowing seeds of doubt about the sanctity of the voting apparatus and signaling his unwillingness to accept its results. And since highest on his grievance list is voting by mail (even though he himself votes that way), we checked in with Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon to get the skinny on election security in Minnesota, where 1.2 million voters are projected to vote from home this year.
This year is different...OBVIOUSLY.
In Minnesota there is a statewide court order, which all the political parties now agree to. The order says that for 2020 only, Minnesotans can wait and have their ballots postmarked as late as Election Day, November 3, as long as they arrive a week later, on November 10. What that means is, by definition, we won’t have a hundred percent of results in by election night. In fact, by definition, we won’t have a hundred percent of results in for a week. But I strongly suspect that we will know the majority of outcomes, either on election night or shortly thereafter.
You can bail on your absentee ballot and opt to vote in person instead.
Anyone who has ordered an absentee ballot that then thinks twice about that and wants to go can absolutely do that—just don’t vote that ballot. That’s a felony. Please don’t intentionally vote twice. But if you want to order the ballot now, and then you change your mind and you think you want to go in, you can absolutely do that.
Voting by mail and then in person is both a felony and incredibly hard.
If that were to happen in Minnesota, literally, a person walking into the polling place, the letters “AB” as in “absentee ballot” would appear next to their name on the roster on the master list. They would almost certainly be caught, if not at the polling place, then after the election. In fact, Minnesota has an arrangement with other states where we even catch one another’s double voters, meaning across state lines. If a Minnesotan says, “Well, I own some property in South Dakota; I’m going to vote there too.” That will be caught.
It’s also both a felony and incredibly hard to vote with a stolen ballot.
A hypothetical I sometimes get is, “What about the mailbox thief?” In Minnesota—and not every state is like this—when you order that ballot at mnvotes.org or on the paper form, you have to provide some personal identifying information. It can be last four of social, it can be driver’s license, it can be a number of things. And unless the ballot is returned with that same particular personal identifying information that the intended voter used when the intended voter ordered a ballot, it’s not going to be counted.
Foreign meddling—is still a thing!
Since March, the pandemic has blocked out the sun in terms of focus or scrutiny on elections-related matters, but this remains a huge priority for our office and every office across the country. We are actively and continuously engaged with the intelligence authorities in Washington on this issue. We get classified briefings and threat assessments. We engage in tabletop exercises with the intelligence communities where we game out hypotheticals. The other reason I think Minnesota is in a good position is that we’re a paper-ballot state. Unlike states that do touchscreen voting with no paper trail or receipt, in Minnesota, you have something—you have a paper trail; you have something you can touch and feel and see.
Voter suppression—ugh, is also still a thing.
In Minnesota, we don’t purge people from voting lists like you’ve read about in Georgia and other states. So that’s a good thing in Minnesota. But outside of Minnesota, does it concern me? Yes, it concerns me a lot. It concerns me that people who are eligible voters get purged from lists, and it could have an effect on outcomes. I mean, a lot of pro sports teams and others have stepped up. And people have gotten wise to the fact that you need to make voting even more physically accessible. Forget about laws; you need to make it physically more doable.
Patience—and trust in facts—is a virtue if election results are slow.
The closer it is, naturally, the less likely it is we’ll know on election night, particularly given this year, particularly given that some segments of votes are not going to be in for a week. I will say that year in and year out, regardless of party or who controls what, there’s been a high degree of competence in Minnesota. And one of the ways you measure that is by turnout. People would not turn out in such huge numbers year after year after year if they had serious doubts of the fundamental confidence, the fundamental effectiveness of our voting system.
Don’t believe the [disinformation] hype.
In the days—and in some states, a couple of weeks—after the election, we have really got to be on guard for disinformation. There will be people probably on all sides of the political spectrum who will be using silence and delay to their advantage just to stoke division, to spread fear, to introduce all sorts of conspiracy theories. And we just have to calmly and patiently assess the real facts and to separate real facts from disinformation.
And if he doth protest too much?
I mean, I think everyone should be on guard for language that undercuts the confidence of the election system before the first votes are even cast. And I think people should be on guard for that language also that undercuts the system before the last votes are cast or counted. And so that should arouse suspicion. And we just have to, for the good of the country, let the process as designed play out.
This article originally appeared in the November 2020 issue.
