After Trump Comments, Sec. Of State Reiterates Integrity Of Absentee, Mail-In Voting

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- With just over a month away from Election Day, Minnesota's Secretary of State is reassuring voters not to question the integrity of the election, following comments made by President Donald Trump at a rally in Duluth Wednesday night.

"Did you see in New York today? A hundred thousand fraudulent ballots," Trump said. "This is crazy what is going on, this is crazy. From St. Paul to St. Cloud, from Minneapolis to Minnetonka."

While New York City is scrambling to send out 100,000 corrected ballots, there is no such problem in Minnesota. More than a million voters in this state have requested absentee ballots.

"We have had this since World War I. This is not new, unique or radical; it's time-tested, and we have three layers of security in Minnesota," Secretary of State Steve Simon said.

Those three absentee ballot security measures are requiring social security or driver's license numbers on returned ballots, individualized bar codes on each ballot, and requiring signatures on each returned ballot.

At least 12 Democratic governors have vowed "every ballot will be counted."

Trump has repeatedly raised questions about unsolicited ballots mailed to voters. That actually does happen in Minnesota. Some 200,000 Minnesotans are automatically sent absentee ballots because they live in smaller communities that have chosen, because of cost and driving distances, to eliminate their polling places. It's been state law since 1987, and most of those communities are in Republican-leaning areas, for example Cass County in northcentral Minnesota.

If you want to vote absentee, go to the Minnesota Secretary of State's website to request one, and it will be mailed to you.