Secretary of State election: Steve Simon

All right, all day long, continuing here, our conversations with candidates, Secretary of State Steve Simon joining us in here for 10 minutes, which we'll talk about a number of issues. We had your challenger on, I believe, last week, Dad Jude. So now your chance to put out what you feel you've done, what you wanna do in responses to him. First, let's start quickly with a little bit of biography, for example, even though you've been in office since 2015. Right. to a little bit about who you are. U of M Law School, Assistant Attorney General, the Minnesota House of Representatives. Right. How did that lead to Secretary of State? To me, I was always into these democracy issues because, to my way of thinking, they're tied to every other issue. Because whatever you care about the most, whether that's jobs or the environment or schools or health care or whatever, all roads sort of lead to the ballot box because you're not going to get very far unless you get people who support your views values into office. And you're not gonna get that unless you have an election system that works for everybody. And so that was kind of the thing for me. Well, a big part of what you've espoused is accessibility. And I know part of it is related to I believe I read on your campaign site about your mother. Yeah. Do you wanna explain that? Yeah, so my mother was an immigrant. And I know how it is for immigrants. I grew up up in a bilingual household she was from Austria and to me I saw that through her eyes what that was like and so that's led to things like look we should be providing voting or elections related things through in other languages right because I know that my mom was wired to understand technical information I don't care whether it's refrigerator manual or a government document if it was in her own language so that's just one bit that really made an impression on me because I saw how she navigated all that. Okay, any other inspirations for accessibility of voting? Yes, well, I'm on the other side of my family. My family, I like to say didn't just immigrate, but fled from Eastern Europe once upon a time over a century ago. And they didn't have a lot of rights where they came from. One of the rights they did not have was the freedom to vote. And they came here to Northern Minnesota at first in the Iron Range and found a better life and found that they finally had a say in who governed them and how. that's something that's never lost on me. Okay. Your challenger, Tad Jude, Republican, he is a big part of this platform, securing the vote, making it safer. Voter ID is a big part of that platform. You have pushed back against that, saying that we don't need it. There are more than 30 states that do have some form of voter ID. We are not. Why do you say and continue to believe that that is a hindrance or obstacle to accessible voting well first of all minnesota voters a few years ago had something to say about that we had 2012 right and it went down but but regardless of all of that here's what i say in minnesota remember to even get into the system to even register to vote you have to show with documents that you are who you say you are and you live where you say you live the difference to my mind is we have a common sense flexible list of things you can use, not only, not just a government issued photo ID. You can use a utility statement to show part of those things. You can have a neighbor vouch for your residence. You can do all those things. So I think in any election system, ours or any other one, you're always looking for a balance between access and security. You need both. You need a blend of both. And this is one of those issues that sometimes you just got to be careful. The more you look, sometimes the less you like. I'll give you an example. I do, I travel to all 87 counties in Minnesota regularly and on occasion I'm at a senior or assisted living facility and I always do a quick sort of flash poll. I say raise your hand if you have a government issued photo ID that shows this address. Not where you came from, not the apartment or home you lived in last year, but now that you're here. Your current address. Right. I've never gotten to 50 percent. So it's just something we've got to go slow on. I'm not saying there isn't any combination of things we could have. I'm not saying that. But we really got to be careful because we don't want to shut out eligible voters. Iowa our neighbor to the south, when they instituted it, they sent out, for those who don't have a government-issued ID, they sent out a voter ID card in the mail when you register. Right. What's your view on something like that? I think that's a step in the right direction, absolutely. I think that you'd have to do that. I mean, one of the things I think most people agree with is if you had that system, you'd have to provide a free ID, including IDs for people who maybe no longer drive, right? They don't have a driver's license, so they'd need something, whether it's what I was doing or someone else, that would be the way to go. What about those who say, well, if you're not showing an ID when you show up at your polling place, that you're just giving a name of somebody that lives in that particular precinct, that is just ripe for voter impersonation. Well, you use the exact right phrase, which few people do, which is voter impersonation is the one and only species of voter fraud that that would get at. It wouldn't get at the other stuff, just that. And that is exceedingly, exceedingly rare, it's really microscopic. So are those things possible? Yeah, they're possible, but you're gonna get nailed, you're gonna get caught. How do you know they're exceedingly rare? How do you know that you're not catching all of it when you say that these are the rarity statistics? Yeah, I mean, you look back since I think the figures that I saw were since I think the 2014 or 2015 election year and you look at the statistics and it really, really is tiny cuz you're gonna get caught. The few times when people do try something like that, you're gonna get caught. How do you get caught? Because we exchange all sorts of data up, down and sideways. We screen every single not only vote cast or voter who cast a ballot, but even voter registration through multiple databases. And this is where we get to things like non-citizens or people who attempt to double vote either within Minnesota or outside the borders of Minnesota. Dead people, for example, we run all that stuff, all of the millions of voter registration through two death databases. So when it comes to the data, nothing is perfect, no data set is perfect, but we, I think in Minnesota historically, have done a really good job of creating a very secure system. Okay, a question from a viewer I wanna get to, it relates to this topic about potential voter impersonation, vouching, and related to Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty's news conference yesterday, charges against two men. And here's the question, are the felony charges of James O'Keefe and Cam Higby proving that voting system actually works moving forward what more can the state do to stop bad actors from disrupting our elections well let me take the second part first i leave to the prosecutors all the facts and who did what and whatever that that's fine my view on all that is this everyone has a first amendment right to make their political statement to dress up in outfits or costumes to yell into a bullhorn to do anything they want but we do have to draw the line at breaking certain laws in our actual polling places do what you want you know the first amendment's meant to protect unpopular speech not popular speech so go for it you have every right but surely we have to draw a line and at least the charge is that they were impersonating voters now who knows what a judge or jury will say it's not for me to say but i i do think we got to be cautious about that we got to have our polling places be islands of calm in terms of their particular video i agree with what's embedded in the question from the caller here or from the viewer, which is that if anything, this demonstrated the security of the system. It was a mischaracterization of vouching. Vouching in Minnesota pertains only to residents. So my dad used it once upon a time when my parents moved from the house I grew up in to another city just a few weeks before the election. So a voucher is only vouching for someone's residence. They're not vouching that they're a citizen or that they're even eligible to vote at all. Just, hey, that guy really lives at that place. And then what the videos don't show you and why this vindicates the system is what happens then? Is the person like my dad just waved in, no questions asked? No, all the questions are asked. So my dad then, and every Minnesota who uses it now, has to provide a driver's license number the voucher the vouchee the vouchee yeah the vouchee let's say has to provide a driver's license number or a partial social security number or a state id number so this narrative out there that they were trying to stoke of oh my god these random people are just waved in with no questions asked you never got there the person who's vouching their identity is confirmed then they're not okay correct uh one other question here that we want to get to we got about two minutes left maybe a little less uh why does the state of Minnesota under the laws administration have such a problem sharing information with the federal government do they have something to hide believe this is referring to voter rolls right right and that's our office not the laws administration well look um the federal government demanded that every state turn over every speck of information they had on every one of our millions of voters we looked at the law and the law to us was clear they don't get that information so we said no they sued us and 34 other states. And so far, the Justice Department is 0 and 27 in those lawsuits, including in Minnesota. So all the courts unanimously so far in the country have agreed with us that under the law, they don't get it. It's not about hiding things. It's about they can have everything. They can have name and address and voting history and birth year. They can have all of that. But they can't have this stuff like our social security numbers, our driver's license numbers, etc. And the courts have universally 27 times, including Minnesota agreed with that. We got about 30 seconds left. Why is there a concern about sharing that information with the federal government, that particular private data? Because they're not entitled to that data and they don't need it as they have somewhat admitted for the work that they say they want to do. They don't need the social security information. They don't need the driver's license information to do what they say they want to do with it. Okay, 20 seconds left. What's your vision for your next term? I think elections are about the future. So in the future, I think this office is about offense and defense. Defense, making sure that no one interferes with our freedom to vote from Washington or anyplace else. Offense, we could do even better when it comes to access. I don't mean voter access. I mean public access to the inner workings of elections. And we can open up a lot more of the processes. We do a lot now, but even more so that people can just watch, look at what's under the hood, satisfy themselves that things are secure. And there's 10 minutes. It goes by fast. It does. Thanks for having me. Steve Simon, Thank you for coming and talking to us. Appreciate it.