LUCAS VASQUEZ: Hello everybody, I’m your host Lucas Vasquez from the Minnesota Daily, and welcome back to another episode of In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota. 

Recently, there has been a lot of debate surrounding voter ID and voting regulations and voter safety, especially now with both the primaries and midterm elections on the horizon. This conversation was sparked due to a major reform of these processes, which was proposed with the introduction of a bill from the Trump administration known as the SAVE America Act. 

Today, we will be diving into what voting looks like here in Minnesota and what this new bill could potentially mean for future voters. I spoke with Minnesota’s very own Secretary of State, Steve Simon, to ask him about what our state does to ensure that voting is both accessible and secure. 

STEVE SIMON: So in any election system, Minnesota’s or any other election system, I think when you’re designing it, what any person looks at is trying to get to the perfect blend, if such a thing exists, between access and security. Those are the two features you have to get in balance, you want both, right? 

Access, meaning, let’s not make this thing an obstacle course, let’s make it pretty straightforward and easy to use. Security means let’s make sure that only eligible voters and no one else is taking advantage of all this accessibility. And I think Minnesota over the last 50 years or so has done a really, really good job of getting that blend right. There’s no such thing as perfection. But we’re in that sweet spot of that blend.

VASQUEZ: He gave me some examples of what this blend looks like in practice.

SIMON: Let me give you a couple examples of laws that are on the books right now. So for over 50 years, Minnesota’s been one of the states that allows same-day or election-day voter registration. 

It means what it sounds like, which is that if you have never registered to vote, or maybe you have but you moved, or you had a name change, or for whatever reason you have to update it, you can do that up to and including game day, the election day itself in the polling place. That’s huge. 

I mean that more than maybe anything else in the last 50 years has put us in a good position. So that’s an example of an access law. Another example I would use is something like online voter registration or the ability of any of us who are eligible voters to vote from home. You don’t have to go to a polling place.

VASQUEZ: President Trump has notoriously been very outspoken against mail-in voting, claiming that it is a cause for immense fraud in elections. Simon detailed some of the security measures in place in Minnesota that hold voting both in person and by mail accountable. 

SIMON: On the security front we have all sorts of laws in place that provide integrity and security to our elections. Let me give you one example of that, so voting by mail, once in a while someone will say to me, and I don’t blame them one bit, they’ll say, “Hey, how can this voting by mail thing be secure?” 

You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of ballots, maybe a million or more ballots in a state like Minnesota, just out there floating away, floating out in the mail system. Maybe they’re in a stack in the post office, they’re being stuffed into residential mailboxes by the mail carrier. 

What’s to prevent some mailbox thief from walking around a neighborhood and plucking out one or 10 or a hundred of these things, these blank ballots, and just voting those ballots. The answer is, in Minnesota, when you order that ballot you have to provide not one, but two forms of personal identifying information: both a driver’s license number and a partial social security number. 

Then when you get the ballot, you have to sign the ballot and you have to have a witness sign the ballot, and you have to send it back with the same two personal identifiers that you used when you ordered it. So back to the mailbox thief, how can he possibly be successful? Well, the only way he’ll be successful is if he knows both forms of personal identifying information that the intended voter used when they ordered it, and he forges their signature and he forges their witness’s signature.

Unless all of those things are true, he thinks he’s getting away with something. He’s swiping those out of mailboxes and he’s voting them, but they will be destroyed and never counted. And the intended voter, once they figure out they didn’t get their absentee ballot, they will, of course, be given another ballot.

VASQUEZ: Now that we have an understanding of the voting system and how voting security works in the state of Minnesota, let’s take a look at the debate surrounding voter ID. I spoke with Michael Minta, the chair of the Political Science Department, who weighed in with his expert perspective. 

MICHAEL MINTA: There was this belief that there was a lot of fraud that’s going on that people are showing up to the voting polls they’re not representing who they really are. And so just like you go and you, oh, before when you could cash a check, you use voter ID or something like that, that you could use that type of identification to verify the person that truly is casting their ballot is who you are. 

So there’s been this push, I mean, it’s been a while, 1990s, 2000s, particularly in the southern states to pass these voter ID laws. Obviously the opponents usually on the Democratic side of the aisle have argued that voter ID actually disenfranchises voters that they’re a substantial proportion of the population. I wouldn’t say substantial, but a good portion of the population that they don’t possess any form of photo ID. 

And that it’s difficult for them to get access to get photo ID. So one, having the documents that you need, whether it’s a birth certificate, proof of residence, those types of documents, you know, like when you go to the DMV. You gotta take all of those documents in order to get an ID. 

And so if you don’t have all of those documents, then you can’t get an ID. Not to mention the cost that’s involved with purchasing a photo ID. So going through those extra steps this is what, you know, people who are against photo ID, is that it creates an extra burden and all it does is discourage people from registering to vote.

VASQUEZ: Minta also talked about the economic burden that voter IDs can impose on individuals, which would disproportionately affect people of color, the elderly and people who live in rural areas. 

I asked Simon what his thoughts were on the newly proposed SAVE America Act and what its implications would be for Minnesota voters.

SIMON: The SAVE America Act, which is being debated right now in the U.S. Senate, it already passed the U.S. House. That is a whole different breed of law, that isn’t just a voter ID law. That is a souped up version on steroids that would do something that we’ve never done in this country, which is it would require everybody who wants to vote to provide documentary proof of citizenship. 

Documentary meaning papers, actual papers that show and prove that you’re a U.S. citizen. Now, I totally understand how any of your listeners, or anyone anywhere might hear that and their first reaction would be, well that sounds not unreasonable. I mean, you know, to vote you have to be 18, you have to be a resident of the place where you say you are and you have to be a U.S. citizen. 

So what’s so wrong with asking someone to just show that with a piece of paper? It sounds reasonable on the surface, and I agree it does, but this is an example where the more you look, the less you like. I’ll give you an example. We have in America, 69 million women who have a different last name now than the one that they were born with almost entirely due to marriage. 

So, if those 69 million women all have passports, no problem, because a passport is a document that proves and demonstrates they’re a U.S. citizen. But what do you do with the tens of millions of those who don’t have a passport and who don’t have a special kind of real ID? That only 17% of Minnesotans have, which shows citizenship.

What do you do if you’re in those tens of millions? Here’s what you do. If you’re one of those tens of millions of people in that category, no passport, no other driver’s license that shows citizenship, then you would have to produce two documents, at least a birth certificate and a marriage record of some kind.

Now, there are plenty of people who will be able to do that. They’ll be able to track down their birth certificate. They’ll be able to track down the marriage record, but there are many, many people who won’t be able to, and that’s not just theoretical. 

VASQUEZ: Simon pointed to an incident about 10 or 15 years ago. In which the state of Kansas experimented with exactly this approach on the state level. In other words, they passed the SAVE Act within their own voting system. 

And before a federal judge struck down that law, they actually held an election. And this resulted in 31,000 eligible Kansans being shut out and kept away from the voting process.

SIMON: Now, Minnesota is what, two, two and a half times the size of Kansas. You can do the math. That is an extraordinary number of people who are eligible to vote, many of whom have been voting for years and decades who wouldn’t be able to do it. 

So you, you have to think through, in my view anyway, whether it is worth it and what is the “it?” When I say it is worth it, what is the scope of the problem?

VASQUEZ: The scope of the problem Simon suggests is illegal immigrants, but illegal immigrants might not be as big a problem as we are led to believe. He referenced a research report conducted by a law professor at the University of St. Thomas, who looked to answer the question of how much fraud is truly happening in Minnesota voting.

SIMON: He looked at 10 years worth of Minnesota voting from 2014 through 2023, 10 years. During that 10 year period, 13.4 million votes were cast in Minnesota, OK? So it’s 10 years, 13.4 million votes cast. 

Do you know how many non-citizens he found that had voted? Three.  Now that is three too many. All of us want that number to be zero. Our goal is perfection. We want the number to be zero. But three out of 13.4 million over a decade, that is a microscopic problem. 

And so the question we have to ask ourselves is, in order to catch three people over a decade, is it worth every single election disenfranchising tens of thousands of people to do that? I say, no. And that’s why I think this particular piece of legislation is flawed.

VASQUEZ: Simon also mentioned that of the three unregistered voters, all three were green card holders. So although they weren’t allowed to vote, they were still legal permanent residents. I asked Minta to tell me about some of the arguments surrounding mail-in voting and what it looks like in practice around the U.S..

MINTA: So say like you’re a college student and you live in, you know, your residency, say you’re from, I don’t know, Pennsylvania, but you’re not registered to vote here in Minnesota. You’re still registered to vote in Pennsylvania, so you can request an absentee ballot. 

So you’re registered there, you put a request in, they’ll send you an absentee ballot and you can send it in and it’ll count in Pennsylvania. Matter of fact, our current president is a resident of Florida and he uses absentee ballots in order to vote, so. And then there’s some states that rely totally on mail-in balloting, like the state of Oregon. 

You request your ballot, they send it to you, they have all type of ways that they can certify to make sure that you truly are the person they send it to the address, you get it, you cast your vote, send it back in and then they count it. And so it’s worked in Oregon for quite some time, very little evidence of fraudulent activity. And so, you know, Oregon does it. 

This has become an unfortunately kind of a partisan issue, right? Where, many Republicans have argued that it’s subject to fraud, that people are getting ballots and they’re mailing them in. But again, there’s this concern that Democratic voters will be disadvantaged and Republican voters will be advantaged. 

So it has become, you know, you can talk about the issues of fraud, but again, very, very limited evidence of fraud. States, again, like Oregon have been doing it for many years. Almost all states have been doing it in the form of absentee balloting, so. Donald Trump uses absentee and mail-in ballots, so.

VASQUEZ: Among all of these clashing rhetorics from both sides of the aisle, the question becomes, what are we willing to trade? Because every law has a cost. The question isn’t whether we want secure elections, because we do. The question is whether we’re willing to lock out millions of eligible American citizens, many of whom have been voting for years. 

If this bill were to pass, we could see it in practice as soon as the midterm elections. As the Senate debates this proposed bill, I hope that the legislative professionals who have a lot more resources than a college podcaster does come to the same conclusion I have: that voter fraud, both at the state and national level, is, microscopic at best, and maybe our time and resources are better focused on bigger, more pressing issues. 

Thank you for listening. This episode was written by Lucas Vasquez and produced by Ceci Heinen. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns feel free to send a message to our email inbox at [email protected]. 

My name is Lucas Vasquez, make sure you get out and vote this year, and thank you for listening to In The Know.