Minnesota Secretary of State's Office gives midterm election update

With an abundance of caution, we're working with the Minnesota General's Office to monitor the monitors, as we do during the primary, and just make sure, as they did during the primary, they're abiding by all relevant laws. I want to say a word here about congressional observers. Interesting name change. For the DOJ, it's monitors. For Congress, they have the right to send observers. They're basically the same thing. Federal law allows for Congress to send elections to states, and they must notify election offices before they come. We just got word that the House minority has confirmed that they will be sending one observer to Hennepin County and one observer to Olmstead County. The House majority, the U.S. House majority, has declined to send any observers at this time. This is a normal process. This has been in place for a long, long time, for many years. At this point, I will hand it over to our Elections Director, Mr. Paul Linnell. Thank you, Secretary Simon. Good morning. I'm Paul Linnell, Elections Director for the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State. In Minnesota, our elections are conducted locally by officials in counties, cities, and towns across the state. Our team has been working hand-in-hand with local elections officials to administer tomorrow's elections. They have been busy the last several weeks training election judges, administering early voting, and preparing equipment and materials for Election Day. There are roughly 3,000 polling places that will be open tomorrow across the state. Those polling places will be fully staffed with election judges from both major political parties. Election judges have been well trained on Minnesota election laws and procedures, including ensuring that only authorized persons are present in and around the polling place and that voting remains calm and orderly throughout the day. As evidenced by the numbers shared by Secretary Simon, early voting has been a popular option for voters and has gone smoothly across the state. We expect that that will continue through the end of the day today and expect the same out at the polls tomorrow. Election judges are also well trained to address any issues that might come up in the polling place. For example, a polling place may experience a temporary technical issue with their ballot counter. When this occurs, voters place their ballot into a secure auxiliary compartment on the ballot counter. Once the issue is resolved, two election judges of different major political parties then feed the ballots through the ballot counter. Minnesota law outlines backup procedures like this one to ensure that voting continues to run smoothly throughout the day, even when issues might arise. Tomorrow night, after the polls close at 8 p.m., election results will begin to be reported on our website, mnvotes.gov. Counties will be working to get these unofficial results posted as quickly as possible, but the priority is always accuracy over speed. There are a few details that we want to highlight about how these results will be reported on election night. After the close of polls, election judges at the polling place review voter check-in counts against the ballots cast to ensure that the numbers are balanced. Results totals are then generated for that precinct, typically through the printing of a report from the voting equipment at the polling place. Election judges then return those unofficial results to the county election But before any precincts results are posted online, they must first be combined with the results from ballots cast during early voting and ballots received by mail. The deadline, as Secretary Simon mentioned, to hand deliver absentee ballots is 5 p.m. However, mail ballots and mailed absentee ballots may be returned up until 8 o'clock p.m. Only after both absentee and early voting totals and polling place totals are available for a precinct can the county enter those results into the Secretary of State's secure election reporting system. From there, unofficial results are published to the Secretary of State's public election night results webpage and made available to the media for reporting. The results posted on that webpage will refresh in 10-minute intervals. In many counties, results are uploaded in large batches of precincts after the county has completed all absentee vote counting. It should not be surprising to see results posted for just a small number of precincts in the first few hours after the polls close on election night and then have several precincts results added all at once after those absentee ballots are counted and that's finished and the results page is refreshed. This is an expected outcome based on the administrative procedures that are taking place and follows a similar pattern from recent election cycles in Minnesota. We anticipate that results will be continuously updated throughout election night and that all results will be reported before breakfast on Wednesday morning. As a reminder, results posted online on election night are always unofficial. It's the summary statements from the polling places and from absentee and early voting that comprise the official results. Before passing it on to our election security navigator Bill Ekblad, I want to briefly walk through the important steps that take place after election day. In the days following the election, county election officials carefully audit and proof the summary statements and prepare their abstracts, which are the official report of votes cast in each county. In every county, a five-person canvassing board will certify the results at a public canvassing board meeting. These meetings are scheduled to take place in each county between November 6th and November 12th. After every state general election, county canvassing boards will also select precincts at random to be included in a public hand count audit for the races for governor, U.S. senator, and U.S. representative. These post-election reviews are scheduled The next meeting will be scheduled to take place in each county between November 12th and November 17th. This is a key step in demonstrating the accuracy of the election results in a transparent manner to reinforce public confidence in the election outcome. After the completion of the county canvas and these post-election reviews, certified abstracts and post-election review reports are provided to the Secretary of State ahead of the State Canvassing Board meeting on November 19th. The State Canvassing Board will meet to review and certify the results for federal and judicial offices and state offices whose boundaries fall in more than one county. Following the completion of the appropriate canvas, a losing candidate may request to have the results of their contest recounted. In Minnesota, there are no automatic recounts. It must always be requested. However, state statute defines specific vote margins when a recount is publicly funded. For contests that fall outside of those margins, a recount may still be requested, but the losing candidate would be responsible for paying the costs of that recount. Minnesota law also outlines a process for resolving election disputes through the contest process. Any election contest must be filed with the courts within seven days after the completion of the appropriate canvas. All of these important mechanisms are clearly defined in state law and carried out by well-trained, dedicated public officials, and they play a key role in ensuring that the outcome of the election is both accurate and trusted. And with that, I'll hand it over to Over to our election security navigator, Bill Ekblad. Thank you, Mr. Linnell. Good morning. As Paul said, I'm Bill Ekblad, the Election Security Navigator in the Office of the Secretary of State. As we've previously discussed, our Election Security Navigator team's all-hands approach to preparing for elections is centered on partnerships, collaboration, and communication. Chief among our partners are, of course, the county and local elections officials across the state who actually conduct elections. But almost as important is the long list of state, nonprofit, academic, vendor, and once again, our federal agency partners that all bring unique resources, information, and support to Minnesota's elections. Our state partners at the Minnesota Fusion Center and Minnesota IT Services have been exceptionally supportive in filling critical physical and cybersecurity gaps since early 2025, and we are now once again directly engaged with the local Minnesota offices of the Federal Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, or DHS INA, The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, and the FBI on matters related to election physical and cybersecurity. We, of course, welcome support and assistance in securing and protecting Minnesota's elections from any willing and legitimate partner. And over the past few weeks, the support from our federal friends has indeed felt genuine. So with our supporting cast in place, we believe strongly that our county partners are as prepared and ready as they can be for whatever may come tomorrow. And with that, you'll now hear from our Voter Outreach Director, Melanie Haislip. Thank you, Bill. I'm Melanie Hazlip. I'm the Voter Outreach Director for the Office of the Secretary of State and I've been here for four years now. I want to let you all know that we have staff ready now to answer your calls and texts about any of your elections questions. You can call our office at 877-600-VOTE or 8683 or text us at 651-217-3862. You will get a live person on the line to answer your questions and then you can go about your day. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. We also work to make sure that voters know about the many great Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. resources and tools we have on our website at mnvotes.gov. Thank you for having me. You can track your ballot in the mail, look up your early vote sites, find your polling place, and what's on your ballot so that you feel prepared to vote. I'll note that you can even print out a sample ballot and bring it with you to the polls as a sort of cheat sheet. The resources are available in 11 different languages, making them accessible to all Minnesotans. Lastly, I want to answer the question that has been asked of our office a lot this year, which is how can I help? The best thing you can do to help is make sure everyone stays informed. There's a lot of misinformation and disinformation and just plain confusion this year. Making sure that your networks have information about what their rights are, what the laws are, and how they can make their voices heard can have a huge impact. Sharing reliable, trusted resources that you can find at mnvotes.gov is an easy way to do this. You can also help someone vote. Help them make their plan to vote or offer them a ride. Make sure they know things like they have a right to time off work to vote without losing their pay or personal leave or vacation time. Offering someone assistance at the polls by accompanying them is another option. And in order to find out more ways that you can help, you can go to mnvotes.gov. With that, I'll pass it back to Secretary Simon. Thanks. Happy to take any questions. Actually, I'm glad you mentioned that because I saw a similar report a couple days ago as well that alluded to a thousand per state. No, it's a thousand total. It's a thousand. Election monitors nationally, which averages out obviously to about 20 per state, although they're probably not going to go to every state. So we anticipate that this will be very much like what we experienced in the primary. Thank you, Murray. And again, I want to give credit where it's due. We had a good dialogue and relationship with them. They let us know that we're going to be. They made every effort to follow all the rules and laws. It seems like that will be the same this time. That's what we anticipate. That's what we hope. Again, the stated reason for sending these folks is a good reason. It's to ensure compliance with certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Our aim all along has just been to make sure that the stated reason is the actual reason. It appeared that way in the August primary. We have no reason to doubt it will be any different this time. But we just want to make sure that we're in contact with them, and we are. You know, why don't I defer to Mr. Linnell on that. Yeah, it's just the minority. It's just the Democratic caucus, not the majority Republican caucus. And they did an inform us of one each, one in Olmstead County, one in Hennepin. But Mr. Linnell, do you know anything more about... I don't know. As far as stated reasons, I know historically they have sent their observers to competitive districts has been one of the stated reasons. And typically they do go with in pairs, one from the minority and one from the majority. As Secretary Simon noted, in this case, we have not been contacted by the majority to indicate that they're also sending an observer. But it is something that's outlined in the Constitution that allows them to send them. To congressional districts, and they've chosen to send two in this case. And do observers also have to legally let you guys know that they're coming to the state, it's kind of the same as election voters? They do need to provide notice that they are sending observers, I guess to state differently than the election monitors, is that because their rights are defined in the Constitution, they are able to access polling places if they wish to do so, whereas in Hennepin and Ramsey County for the Department of Justice monitors, they have chosen and have the right to say we would like you to stay outside of that 100-foot boundary. I'm wondering, you talked about not getting the usual cooperation from the feds, including Trump won. Right. Is that, regarding threat assessments, is that still the case? You're not... Well... I'm going to hand it over to Bill in a moment, and he alluded to this in his remarks. I have to say, late in the game, from my judgment, in my judgment, late in the game, they have started providing some services. So they recently, was it last week, Bill? Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, we got our first, and so far only, well, it was a two-pronged security briefing, which is great. I welcome that, if they're going to turn the ship around. I wish that had come months ago as we'd come to expect, but Bill Eckblad is right when he says, and I'll have him amplify on this, that as of late, emphasize the word late, they have been providing more... Bill, do you want to amplify that a little bit? Yeah, not a whole lot to add to what the Secretary said, but I do think it's worth emphasizing the fact that these are the local offices of these agencies here in Minnesota that have been here before the current administration and since, and in many cases, the same individuals that we worked with in past years who are still here, still doing their jobs. In some cases, the faces have changed as people have moved on and whatnot. But as I mentioned earlier, our engagement over these last few weeks has been It's been a long time since I've been here, and it's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. Intelligence and Assessments, INA, Intelligence and Analysis, I would say. And then the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA. Those two have someone here all the time, as well as the FBI, who has a lane in election security and election crimes coordination. To follow that question, you mentioned press conferences ago that you guys were having to offset some of the costs that the Republicans weren't getting. This late in the game, how much have you guys already invested in... Yes, that much hasn't really meaningfully changed. If you recall what I said before, our overall placeholder, and we'll be able to tally it up after the election, is up to a quarter of a million dollars that we have had to spend or we expect to have spent by the time this is done. And just to sort of... Describe the differences here. What Mr. Eckblad's describing and what we were the beneficiary of were a couple of intelligence briefings, which is great. There are things, though, that they have not, even to this day, repeated that we have enjoyed in past cycles, like penetration testing, for example. That's basically a fancy word or phrase for white hat hacking, where you invite someone to come in to find the weak spots and the soft spots of that. We remain on our own for that. And there are other examples of that as well. But look, I want to, as the old saying goes, find the good and praise it, right? Which is, we welcome this late-in-the-game decision to start providing some of the services. But no, we're still spending money that we wouldn't have had to before on things. That's a prominent example, the cybersecurity piece. So you guys did still do penetration? Yes. Oh, yes. Yes, I should have. Thank you for the invitation to clarify. We absolutely have done it. It's just that used that used to be something that we got for free from the federal intelligence authorities. And that has not been forthcoming this cycle, even this late in the game. So we have absolutely covered that at our own expense. Yes. My understanding is, Bill, no, I think that's just not been on the menu this year at all for any state. So that's not a Minnesota-specific thing. They just haven't done that this year. And then the DOJ monitors, you said that you guys are, like, working with the FBI on the intelligence side of things, but the monitors are not from a... Other reporting I read, not FBI agents, not ICE agents. That's right. They could be like ATF, DEA. Do you know exactly what agencies they're coming from? I know you said they're lawyers. Right. They're typically from the Department of Justice, like literally lawyers or other employees at the Department of Justice, typically not with ATF, as far as I know, or other agencies. They're literally Justice Department lawyers or people who work with Justice Department lawyers who come plainclothes. They don't have badges. They don't have guns. We're just here to observe wearing plainclothes. And do you know how many of them there are going to be in the two counties? How many monitors do you guys have to monitor? You're going to come over again. Right. I'll leave that to, do you know, Paul, do we have some update numbers? Yeah, I think when we were in touch with the Department of Justice, they'd indicated expecting five or six teams of two in Hennepin County and four or five teams of two in Ramsey County, and that the Attorney General's monitor, the monitor effort would probably be similar in scale to be able to cover and keep up with that allotment. Yeah, it's always a consideration, but, you know, one advantage of a primary election always, every time, is it's a really good dress rehearsal, right? I mean, it's a blessing in disguise that this happened, no pun intended. Blessing in disguise that this happened during... Um, the primary and not the general where you have a lot more people and just the stakes seem to be higher. But, you know, so we learned a thing or two. And I know Minneapolis did as well about just being on the lookout for that. And again, as I and we have said all along, it is everybody's right to do guerrilla journalism or to dress in costumes or make your political point or yell into a bullhorn. Absolutely. Go for it. But we got to draw the line. Breaking our laws in polling places, and that line has been drawn. But yeah, I think people are on extra alert, for sure, given that episode in Minneapolis during the primary. Those individuals didn't cast a ballot. If someone were to try and do that and go all the way to submitting that ballot, how confident are you in the state system to detect that, even if they don't post it online and video it? Yeah, very confident. I will point out, as I have in the past, they didn't do it. Because we had the security protocols in place. So they didn't get to the next step. And I could go down a long, deep rabbit hole on the vouching process and why it's very, very secure and what they didn't show in those videos. But yeah, suffice it to say that I think we're very confident in the system being able to point out and, as we saw in the videos, prevent anyone from doing something that they're not supposed to do. Does that strike you as weird? I would use a different word. I would say it strikes me as very disappointing. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for your time. And again, as I've said before, and a couple of you have alluded to it, I will... I give credit where it's due in the first Trump administration, as well as in the Biden administration. I give them very high grades for cooperation up to and including things like penetration testing to my way of thinking. There was no reason to take it off the menu. It's certainly not a budget buster, I would imagine, for them. And it was something that helped us a lot. But I want to emphasize that we have absolutely done that. We just have done it at our own expense this time. And I think it's an unforced error. Mr. Chair, again, I am encouraged by this belated Turn around in the intelligence realm and hopefully it bodes well for 2028 and maybe I'm speculating here, but maybe this is Department of Homeland Security and CISA wanting to rebuild those relationships and to get back on the track that multiple administrations have been on and I will accept that for the gesture that it is. Two pieces of advice for any voter who sees something or thinks they see something worth reporting. First, talk to the election judges. They are trained specifically in ways to handle exactly these kinds of disruptions. So that's number one. And number two, we do want to hear And that's our number, 877-600-VOTE. So that number doubles as a line to call in to ask questions, but it's also a reporting line that people can call to say, hey, I saw something. I'm not calling with a question. I'm calling because I want you to know that I saw something in Precinct X. So those are the two things. And then we can make the decision about whether to draw in other partners. Maybe that's the Attorney General's office. Maybe that's others, depending on the circumstances. To be clear, election monitors are people who are leaving a foreign place? That's right. Correct. That's right. That's right. And no one has to talk to them. One more question. I have one over here. Sorry. Yeah. No, that's okay. Have you ever... It's not great that the feds are reengaging. Is there anything to share that you can talk about or any sense that they are, I don't know, feeling a little uncomfortable with what they're seeing out there? You know, I... My, I don't want to get into too many deals for all the obvious reasons, but I would say they are sharing, as they had in the past, relatedly, they are sharing, you know, sort of the threat assessment, right? Both state actors, non-state actors, what they may or may not be up to, that sort of thing. And that's helpful. That's a good thing. Okay. Thanks, everybody. Thanks.