Secretary of State Steve Simon: Minnesota vote was ‘high turnout, low drama’

Minnesota’s 2024 election results came later than usual and with some initial reporting discrepancies that forced a few counties to redo counts or add missing absentee votes.

But as of Wednesday afternoon, Secretary of State Steve Simon said he was confident in the results now posted to the agency’s website. In addition, Simon said Minnesota voter turnout was strong and that voting happened without some of the disruptions seen in other states.

MinnPost: I know you’re busy, so I’ll get right to it. Where do you feel you are right now? It looks like you’re 100% all precincts reported, absent recounts.

Steve Simon: The last I looked was about an hour, hour and a half ago. I guess we are now literally at 100 percent. Yes.

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MP: Is it too early to know how you did turnout-wise?

SS: It’s not too early. We think, and literally, we last crunched the numbers about two hours ago, three hours ago. It’s not gonna meaningfully change. I think we’re gonna settle in at about 76%, which, to put it in perspective, is not as high as 2020. Then again, no one I know of in America was as high. There was an overall American decline from that very high watermark in 2020 when, for whatever reason, even during a pandemic, Americans just rushed to the polls or voted from home. But higher than 2016 and comparable to within I think a fraction of a percentage of 2012. So even though it’s down from 2020, it’s still really high, and that same percentage was good enough to be best in the nation. I don’t know yet, and we won’t know for some time about where we stack up with the other states, but that’s really solid. That is high turnout. 76%.

MP: Let’s talk recounts. These are within the automatic recount, taxpayer-funded recounts?

SS: Right. There’s the Rep. Wolgamott seat and then the Rep. Tabke seat — automatic in the sense that it still has to be requested. But if requested, the taxpayer pays. I always point out that, you know, technically, anyone could ask for a recount as long as they pay for it. Someone could lose statewide by a million votes, and as long as they’re paying for it, you could have one. But yes, in terms of the automatic threshold upon request, yeah, those are the two.

MP: And the timing of those, should they request them?

Cassondra Knudson: In 14B, because it falls within a couple of different counties, it has to be organized by our office. So that can’t happen until after the state canvassing board meets on Nov. 21. So we’ve got a while before that recount can begin if requested. And then 54A  is one county only. So, Scott County is meeting on Nov. 13, and then there’s a 48-hour window to request a recount. 

MP: When should we know that a recount in both those cases has been completed?

Simon: I would say it’s typically early December.

MP: History tells us that election night counts are pretty accurate.

SS: I don’t wanna prejudge any outcome, particularly the one that we will directly oversee, so I don’t wanna prejudge. But you could draw your own conclusion by looking at similar recounts and seeing how many votes are typically picked up.

MP: So, what happened in Scott County?

SS: What happened in Scott County was, and I’m sure you probably saw the statement that they put out, but what basically happened, as I understand it, is they put out some numbers, identified a possible discrepancy and then wanted to redo them, particularly in the city of Shakopee as I understand it. And so they decided it was best to, though it would be time consuming to go through and count everything again, just to make sure, and they satisfied themselves that they had resolved the discrepancy and then sort of reposted.

MP: Do you have confidence that those numbers are accurate now?

SS: I absolutely do. Yes.

MP: It also looked like in 14B that some Sherburne County numbers were added fairly late that reversed the result there. What do you know about that?

SS: Again, I would defer to them for their explanation, but my understanding is what happened is they reported what they thought were full numbers, including absentee ballots, and then came to discover that there was another smaller batch of absentee ballots that had not been included in the original round of numbers that they pushed out. So they added to make a complete set. That’s my understanding, but I really do defer to them.

MP: But it is unfortunate that in the current context of elections that both reversed races in favor of the DFL.

SS: I don’t wanna get into the punditry of it. I would just say what we’re always aiming for is complete results and we’re urging the counties to always provide timely and complete results.

MP: Why did Anoka decide to proceed the way they did? I mean, they were the only ones who made that judgment (to wait until all votes were counted to release any results).

SS: Anoka, it was just pure volume. That is our understanding that they had a real uptick in last-minute absentee ballots. Literally last-minute, meaning on Election Day, both from that 3 p.m. to 8 period, the extended new time, and ballots that came in earlier than that from the early mail delivery or people hand delivering it. And so they just tried to be as painstaking as they could and make sure that they were delivering all their results at once rather than somehow supplementing.

MP: In the scheme of things, is the move from the 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. deadline worth it, given that they do seem to be getting attributed to the delay?

SS: Yes. We’re talking about enfranchising, literally thousands of people. Hennepin County alone had about 1,500 people who fell into that category. And I think that is a really good trade. Some delays, some potential delays, I should say. I don’t think they’re automatically baked in but in exchange for thousands of people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to vote. And just to put it in perspective, when the Legislature made this change, it was because, as others pointed out, there had been a long string of elections where, because of the 3 p.m. deadline, which is kind of an odd deadline, right? It doesn’t correspond to anything. It seems a little bit random. That every election cycle in certain counties, there was a sad pile of ballots that got in at 3:30 or 4 or 5. And this was particularly true because the postal service in the final month or so of the election nationally prioritizes election mail and will often, on Election Day and sometimes even the day before election, they make multiple runs, not just the once-daily run, to counties and cities.

And they were finding that the post office would make runs after three and have some number of ballots. So the idea was, well, why not grow that window or expand that window and make it correspond to something that’s real. And 8 p.m. was a good match, it’s also a deadline. It’s the close of polls. So it’s not just some random number. The decision was made, as I understand it, to just add the five hours because it was a deadline that people were familiar with. This is about more people voting, more eligible voters voting who otherwise would have had their ballots spoiled.

MP: I should have you talk about this: There were concerns, there were worries about disruptions, there were worries about all sorts of things that do not appear to have taken place.

SS: That’s right. You’ve heard me say it a lot that my two wishes were high turnout and low drama, and I think we got there high turnout, 76%, very good, and low drama. We did not, as other states did yesterday and the day before, we did not have bomb threats. We did not have deepfakes. We did not have, as far as I’m aware, any meaningful incidents reported to us of harassment, threats, intimidation directed either at voters or at election workers. That’s a really good thing. That’s low drama. So, from an administrative standpoint, I have to tell you, it was really smooth sailing overall. It really was. And the credit is due to the counties, the cities, the townships. This bears repeating that yesterday was just the final day. It was months and months of preparation and thought and planning. And I think our local partners really, really did a fantastic job under some challenging circumstances.

MP: By constitution, you convene the Minnesota House on Jan. 14. Might they ask you to stick around?

SS: As you know, I open the House, or the secretary of state does, and is the temporary speaker until the body elects a speaker. So this is a familiar role, but it’s usually ceremonial and very brief, like for an hour. But I did read that in 1979, the possibility that the then-secretary of state would, for some longer period, be speaker actually hastened negotiations to figure out some sort of power sharing agreement. So I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to anyone in the Legislature about this. Who knows how this would play out?

Editor’s note: Peter Callaghan wrote this story for MinnPost.com. Callaghan covers state government for MinnPost. 

This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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