Minnesota might end up #1 in voter turnout, but some states still counting

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon is proud to have been re-elected for a third term in office, but he seems more proud of Minnesota’s continued success in being among the leaders in voter turnout.

“We’re at about 60.66% which is down from the last midterm election where we were north of 64, but everyone in the country was down,” Simon said during an interview recorded for “At Issue with Tom Hauser.” Simon continued, saying “Right now the one measurement that really matters nationally, I think it’s called the U.S. Elections Project with a professor out of the University of Florida, he’s the established pro at this. He has us tentatively at number one. It’s only tentative because a lot of states aren’t fully in yet. We’ll be on the medal stand for sure. We’ll be first, second or third. I can almost guarantee that.”

Not only is Minnesota already done counting and declaring winners, state and county officials are already in the process of certifying results and doing post-election reviews to make sure everything was done properly. The reviews start in all 87 counties. “Then we do a second deep dive where we have Supreme Court justices literally drawing out of a hat or a bowl to see a numbers, dozens of precincts around the state where our office will then go and check the work again,” Simon says. “So it’s all part of a process I hope ensures some trustworthiness for our election system.”

So why are so many states, like California, still counting ballots in congressional races where winners haven’t been declared yet? “The number one reason is that many states have not just a postmark rule, but a very perhaps overly generous postmark rule where as long as you postmark it by election day and say it arrives a week, I think in some cases ten days or more after, it’s still counted.  So they’re still waiting for ballots to roll in or they just rolled in and they’re still counting. We don’t have that in Minnesota. In Minnesota, everything’s gotta be in by election day. Both absentee and regular game day votes, obviously, so we have very quick election results and in those other states it’s this sort of rolling deal.”

You can see the entire interview with Simon on “At Issue” at 10 a.m. Sunday.