SPEAKER: And now, please welcome Minnesota Secretary of State, Steve Simon.
STEVE SIMON: Thank you, everyone. I’m Steve Simon, Minnesota Secretary of State. I am a white male. I am about 5 foot 8 inches tall. I have sandy-colored short hair, and I’m wearing a blue blazer or sport coat over a white patterned shirt. It’s a pleasure to be with you here today. Thank you to Quinn. Thank you to the Council of Disability.
This is an important time. You may know that in our office, the office of Secretary of State, we have a lot of responsibilities. We have a lot of duties. They are either in the Minnesota Constitution or they are otherwise at Minnesota State law. But there is no question that the duty of ours in our office that gets the most attention, the most interest, and yes, the most scrutiny is elections. We oversee the Minnesota election system.
Now, just to level set here. Let me tell you what we don’t do. We do not count votes in our office. We never have. We probably never will. Vote counting happens in thousands of places across Minnesota at the township, city, and county level by your friends and neighbors. These are folks who stand up, and step up, and do the job of being election judges and poll workers, so we don’t do that, but we do so much else in the realm of voting and democracy.
For example, way before anyone votes, we do things like certify the elections equipment for use in Minnesota. And way after everyone votes, we do things like post-election reviews to make sure that the math lines up, that the numbers add up, that everything ties together. We check the work.
And in the middle, like right now when we’re in the legislative session, we spend a lot of time in the capital with legislators trying to tweak and change and perfect our election system. So as a result of all that, I like to say that we and I, are in the democracy business. And it is one heck of a time, right now, to be in the democracy business.
You may know this, but even if you know it, it’s fun for me to repeat. Minnesota is a champion of voting. We are literally most years champions of voting, number one in the country in overall voter turnout. I’m sad to report that this last election, we missed being number one by 2/10 of 1%. The worst part is that Wisconsin beat us.
So it’s a border battle. We’ll get them next time. But the silver medal is just as shiny as the gold. But we want to take our rightful place next time as number one in the country. But we know we have work to do, because not every community, either geographically or demographically, votes at the same sky high numbers as the state overall. So we know we have work to do.
And in our office, when it comes to the disability community, we have tried to do our part. For me, it’s somewhat personal. I have a son with special needs, so I always have him in mind when I’m advocating, along with so many people in this room online, or not even with us here today, for people’s rights when it comes to voting and democracy.
So I wanted to tell you about just a few examples of what we’ve together been able to accomplish over the last few years. I should tell you, as sort of a baseline, that one of the things we’ve done for many years in our office is, we have a Disability Advisory Council. There are people in this room who have attended those meetings.
We have a quarterly meeting that we convene. People can show up in person, or we do it via Zoom or Teams, where we invite stakeholders from all over Minnesota to come in and participate, tell us what we’re doing right. Also, tell us where we can improve, or maybe what we’re doing wrong when it comes to access to democracy for all Minnesotans, regardless of ability, regardless of background, regardless of zip code.
But let me just talk about a few accomplishments that we can all be proud of in terms of how we’ve tried to level the playing field for everyone in Minnesota. One has to do with the ability to vote from home. You may know that a decade or more ago, we passed a bill in Minnesota that allows everyone who’s eligible to vote, absolutely everyone, to vote from home.
You no longer have to have a doctor’s note, or an excuse, or an explanation. We just said, if you’re eligible to vote, you can vote from your couch, you can vote from your kitchen table. And it’s no one’s business why you want to vote that way. And in Minnesota, an increasing number of people have taken advantage of that.
In the last election, just a few months ago, 39% of Minnesotans did not vote on election day of those who voted. 61% did, but 39% chose to vote either from home or otherwise by mail or in person by absentee. So it’s growing in popularity. But here’s the special piece that we’re particularly proud of.
For years, there’s been a federal law and state laws that allow overseas and military voters to have certain privileges when it comes to voting. And probably the biggest privilege is that if you’re a military or overseas voter, this is for decades, you can have your ballot sent to you electronically, your blank ballot.
We had the idea, working with so many of you, to extend that privilege, to extend that shortcut, if you will, to Minnesotans with disabilities, so that they can receive that ballot, that blank ballot, electronically instead of having to make it paper. That’s one thing that we were able to do in the last couple of years, which will make voting even better and even smoother for a lot of people. But we understand that doesn’t get to everyone, that doesn’t address everyone’s needs, so there’s always more work to do. Let me give you a second example.
Until about four years ago, believe it or not, even in Minnesota, where we pride ourselves on good laws and good culture when it comes to voting, even in Minnesota there was a bad law on the books. Usually, we’re about getting good or better laws on the books, but here was an example of a bad law on the books.
And this law that we had in Minnesota said, for many years, that, if someone wants to assist another person in a polling place, for whatever reason– it could be by reason of a person’s disability, it could mean an English language barrier, it could mean anything– if you wanted to assist someone else in the polling place, you were limited to assisting three people. A fourth would be illegal. So you could assist three people.
So my late father, later in life, had a severe disability. He had Parkinson’s disease and flowing from that he had some mobility and balance issues. So I used to bring him to the polling place every election. And I could assist him in the polling place. Now, that’s the only one I would assist. If two other people asked me to, I could. If a third in addition to my father did, I would be breaking the law. So there was this arbitrary limit.
So we went to court. And we initiated litigation, and we had great help from the disability community. And we said, this is a violation of the federal Voting Rights Act, the epic, famous 1965 Voting Rights Act, which said, and still says that, “A voter can have the person of his or her choice help them in the polling place.” That’s what the Voting Rights Act said.
It didn’t say, you can have anyone help you want unless they’ve helped three other people. It said you can have anyone. They don’t even have to be an eligible voter. They don’t have to be a resident of the state. Anyone you want, it could be a 10-year-old. That’s what the federal Voting Rights Act said. And after some protracted litigation, we won. And now that law has been stricken from the books in Minnesota.
So as many of you who have been around the capital know, this is a good example of the fact that sometimes, when it comes to public policy, it’s about going on the offense, passing bills. But sometimes, it’s about defense, getting rid of or blocking things that are there, either proposed legislation or laws that you need to get rid of.
A third example I want to tell you about is one that did not require legislation. We didn’t have to go to the legislature and ask for anything, including money. It’s just something we decided to do because there was a need. We saw the need, we met the need, not alone, but with the active help of many people in this room and otherwise in the community.
And, that is, starting a couple of elections ago, we started up an ASL, American Sign Language, call center at election time, which means that in addition to the normal call center, that we always stand up in the weeks before an election, which gets thousands, and thousands, and thousands of phone calls on everything from where someone’s polling place is, how they should vote absentee, how they should go to ballot to their child out of state in college and the like– we knew that phone setup would exclude certain people.
So we stood up with the help of so many and American Sign Language call center, which has been a huge success, which has gotten national recognition. And more importantly, has enabled people who otherwise wouldn’t have the chance to get their questions answered in a language that connects and makes sense for them.
I get asked a lot, given my job, why I think it is that Minnesota does so well in voting year, after year, after year. People will say, well, you say you’re in the democracy business, you must have a theory. You must have an idea about why it is that Minnesota does so well. Why are we most often number one, or number two, or number three in the country? What is it? Is it luck? Is it coincidence? Is it something in the water? What is it?
And I always say, I think it boils down to two things. One, good laws, and two, a good pro-voting culture. And there is no limit to what we can do together operating in those two worlds– the world of legislation and laws, and the world of just a pro accessibility culture. There is no limit to what we can accomplish, not just in the democracy business, but in every business. That’s what we’re seeing here today.
So I want to thank you for your time and for your attention. There’s more work that we can be doing. There’s no question about that. But Minnesota, really, over the last number of years, has led the way in showing the rest of America what it means to be as accessible as possible to make sure that our democracy truly works on a day-to-day basis for absolutely everyone in Minnesota.
That’s the goal. That’s the vision. That’s the dream, and we’re going to keep on chasing it. Thank you very much. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]