Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon details new voting laws during visit to Bemidji

BEMIDJI — In his visit to Bemidji on Thursday, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon outlined recent changes in state law that he believes will improve the accessibility and security of elections.

Co-hosted by the League of Women Voters of Minnesota and the Northwest Minnesota Foundation, Simon visited Bemidji State’s American Indian Resource Center to present to community members and local high school students.

The primary purpose, beyond getting feedback and connecting with area residents, was to provide information on different items of new legislation passed by the state legislature during its last session.

“With the sheer volume of changes in law and output from the legislature, (last session) was the most impactful in generations,” Simon said. “You may agree or disagree with different things, but it’s hard to say it wasn’t impactful.”

Many of the changes have a direct impact on voting, aiming to increase accessibility to eligible voters while maintaining the system’s security.

“Overall (Minnesota) has done a good job of balancing access and security, that’s the balance everyone is looking for,” Simon shared. “If you’re eligible to vote, it should be accessible, it should be easy and not a chore. Security is you only want eligible people taking advantage of that access.”

One of the first items Simon brought up was the recent change that will

restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated individuals

upon their release, impacting an estimated 55,000 Minnesotans.

“If you’ve done your time, you’re out, you can vote,” he said. “That’s 55,000 Minnesotans who a few months ago didn’t have the right to vote, and now they do. Now the real challenge is to get to those 55,000 folks and even tell them the law has changed.”

Simon explained the motivations behind this change, saying that if a judge and the criminal justice system have deemed someone safe to re-enter society, he believes they should have some say in how that society is run.

The measure could also help reduce recidivism, Simon explained, by allowing and encouraging formerly incarcerated people to take part in civil responsibilities and pro-social behavior.

Another change passed by the legislature is adjusting the previously opt-in voter registration system that existed when applying for a state ID or driver’s license to an opt-out system.

If someone who is eligible to vote, as a U.S. citizen 18 years or older, applies for a driver’s license, it will be assumed that they would like to register to vote unless they check a box indicating otherwise.

“Now it just presumes you would like to vote if you are otherwise eligible,” Simon said.

A type of pre–registration for voting has also had its availability extended to all 16 and 17-year-olds. Minnesotans who are either of these ages and are U.S. citizens can fill out an application that will automatically register them to vote on their 18th birthday.

“The form takes two or three minutes to fill out,” Simon shared. “It gets 16 and 17-year-olds thinking about being voters, and what that means.”

Election materials and information at polling places will also be made available in languages besides English if an area’s population of that language’s speakers exceeds a certain threshold. While a recent change, Simon explained that it’s not something wholly new to Minnesota.

“Minnesota has been doing some version of this since 1896,” he said, showing copies of election materials printed in Swedish, German, Finnish and Italian.

Simon also explained that while someone from one of these immigrant populations must be a naturalized U.S. citizen to vote, which requires a basic English test, providing technical information for elections in their native language increases accessibility and understanding.

The state legislature also passed a measure to protect against disinformation during elections, specifically any disinformation that tries to infringe on another person’s right to vote.

To meet the threshold of disinformation, the individual sharing it must “know it to be false, and do it for the purpose of interfering with someone else’s right to vote.”

An example of this shared by Simon was to knowingly spread inaccurate information on polling times or say that only certain people could vote on certain days.

Throughout his discussion on all of these changes, Simon emphasized the extensive security measures included that work to ensure only those who are eligible to vote do so, and that each eligible voter only fills out one ballot each election.

“These are changes,” he said, “I believe will make our already accessible and already secure system even more accessible and even more secure.”

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