Minnesota's top elections official says 'glitch' in automatic voter registration system is fixed

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — 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 state, along with Virginia and South Dakota, will be the first in the country to begin in-person voting in the 2024 presidential election.

Two people at the Department of Public Safety, not just one, will now review every application to make sure everything is in order before the applicants are added to the voter rolls, Simon said. He said that should prevent any ineligible people from being improperly automatically registered and allowed to vote in November.

“I have every reason to believe that these steps that the Department of Public Safety has adopted will lead to that outcome. In other words, that we won’t have the kind of glitch we saw, and then we won’t have someone inadvertently or otherwise who’s not supposed to vote voting,” he said.

The lead Republican on the Minnesota Senate Elections Committee, Sen. Mark Koran, of North Branch, said he appreciated the changes but called for stronger checks for all voters.

“I’m encouraged their prompt response and ability to adapt will lead to fruitful conversations next year about putting in place a uniform voter verification process for every voter registration,” Koran said in a statement. "No matter where or when you register to vote — when you get your driver’s license online or at the polls — every voter registration deserves to have the same verification and review process across the state.”

In Oregon, which has a similar automatic registration system, officials acknowledged last week that the state had mistakenly registered more than 300 noncitizens as voters since 2021 in what they described as a “data entry issue” that happened when people applied for driver’s licenses. Of those, two had voted in elections since 2021. State and federal laws prohibit noncitizens from voting.