MN Sec. of State clarifies new policy after “glitch” in automatic voter registration system

ST. PAUL, Minn. (GRAY) – Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon has confirmed that the state's relatively new automatic voter registration system suffered a "glitch."

"We were made aware this summer of a glitch. And let me be clear, that the law is crystal clear. The law says this has to be airtight," said Simon.

The automatic registration system automatically opts-in eligible voters when they go to obtain a drivers' license. According to Simon, some of the new registrants were missing information on their profiles, including addresses, names and citizenship statuses. All of that information is up to the state's Department of Vehicle Services, or DVS, to input.

The Office of the Secretary of State, or OSS, ordered that DVS a manual review of every automatic registrant, for a total of 103,986 records. Simon said about 1% had info missing.

"[DVS] graciously accepted the invitation that they need to do a hand check of every single person. This isn't a sample; no, each and every record. We asked them, and they did it," he said.

Legislative Republicans raised concerns after initial results of the check were made public last Friday.

"The letter from DPS only raises more questions. One percent of more than 100,000 registrants is 1,000 people. What is the actual number of registrations that were inactivated? Based on a public release from the Secretary of State and the response from DVS, we still don't know the answer to a simple question: Did any of these registrants vote in the August primary?" said House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, and House and Senate Elections Committee ranking minority members Representative Paul Torkelson and Senator Mark Koran.

Simon confirmed the following Thursday that none of the inactivated voters cast a ballot in the August Primary.

"No ineligible voters cast a record in the primary after that hand review that they did," said Simon, "But what we did, in an abundance of caution, was when we got that limited number of folks who shouldn't have been forward to us, we inactivated all their records right away. We didn't even wait for the counties to do it."

Simon sad his office worked with DVS to implement a new policy.

"We asked them, and they did, to implement a new policy so that now there are two sets of eyes, not one that is reviewing every record so that we don't have these kinds of glitches," said Simon.

Mark Koran (R-North Branch), one of the authors of the letter to the OSS, said he's happy to see the response from Simon and his office.

"We look forward to working with the Secretary of State and everyone as [things] continue to move forward with automatic voter registration and to ensure that everybody and only those eligible, reside on the statewide voter registration database," said Koran.