MN Secretary of State inactivates voting records of around 1,000 people after review of Automatic Voter Registration law

The Minnesota Secretary of State has inactivated the voting records of around 1,000 people following a review of the new Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) system.

The AVR law allows eligible Minnesotans to get automatically registered when getting a license or state ID.

The results of the review have some Republican leaders questioning whether anyone who took part in the August primary wasn’t supposed to vote

In a letter from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety (DPS), they say the records that were deactivated are not necessarily ineligible to vote but instead may be missing some documents, like an updated proof of residency.

The department says they found there were missing documents during a manual review of 103,896 individual records on Tuesday. The manual review involved Driver and Vehicle Services (DVS) employees looking at the files and images of documents submitted with the application to confirm they were classified correctly in the system.

The letter says, “After a manual, two-layered review by DVS of all applicant files, DVS is not aware of anyone voting in Minnesota who was ineligible to vote.”

The DPS says that DVS records with missing or mislabeled documents may be from eligible voters and the lack of citizenship proof in the database doesn’t mean that person is not a citizen or ineligible to vote.

In the case of driver’s license renewals, citizenship-affirming documents may have been scanned before the AVR system was implemented in December 2023 and before the enhanced training and protocols were in place, according to DPS.

The Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office says it partners with DVS to ensure only eligible Minnesotans are being registered to vote.

House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, and House and Senate Elections Committee ranking minority members Rep. Paul Torkelson and Sen. Mark Koran released the following statement:

“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?

The election is 52 days away, and early voting begins on September 20. Minnesotans want to trust our elections are secure and fair. They deserve to know if our election officials can even answer these questions when asked.”