Minnesota’s top elections official says ‘glitch’ in automatic voter registration system is fixed
ST. PAUL, Minn. — While there was a “glitch” in Minnesota’s new automatic voter registration system, Secretary of State Steve Simon said Thursday that nobody who was ineligible voted in the August primary as a result of the problem.
That had been one of the questions that Minnesota Republicans last week said was still hanging after Simon and other state officials said they had made changes to the system after flagging around 1,000 potentially problematic registrations.
Minnesota’s new system went live in April. Residents who apply for state-issued IDs such as driver’s licenses are now automatically registered to vote without having to opt in, assuming they’re eligible to vote. And 16- and 17-year-olds can preregister to vote once they turn 18.
After discovering documentation problems, Simon said, workers at the Department of Public Safety, which issues driver’s licenses, then did a hand review of all those automatic registrations, which totaled around 100,000. Out of an “abundance of caution,” he said, about 1,000 registrations were deactivated. Those people will be notified that they have to reregister.
“The law is crystal clear. The law says this has to be airtight,” Simon said at a news conference ahead of Friday’s start of early voting in Minnesota. The
