ST PAUL, Minnesota — The people who run Minnesota's elections would love to lead the nation again in voter turnout percentage, even in the middle of a pandemic. And, they're off to a good start.
As of Monday night, 1,839,710 votes had been cast by Minnesotans. That includes people who chose to vote absentee in person or by mail, and those who live in areas of the state where elections are conducted only via mail.
That number is roughly 62% of all votes in the last presidential election. In 2016, a record 2,968,281 Minnesotans voted, which was 78% of eligible voters. And in opinion polls conducted in late September 61% of voters said they still planned to vote in person on Election Day.
Nearly 300,000 absentee ballots requested by voters haven't been mailed back of delivered by hand as of Monday night. Due to a court ruling calling into question the validity of ballots received after Tuesday night, voters have been asked to refrain from putting them in the mail at this point.
The options that remain as of Election Eve is to deliver the absentee ballot by hand to your city or county elections office -- the address on the outer ballot envelope -- or to deliver them by hand to a staffed drop-off location.
Secretary of State Steve Simon said those who've already mailed their ballot but haven't been able to confirm the ballot was received and accepted may override that ballot by voting in person.
It's not double voting
Simon compared it to a canceled check.
"They can override that in-transit ballot. If the ballot is on its way somehow from point A to point B, it hasn’t been tracked as received yet, by a particular county or city, they can go in and override it," Simon explained.
"There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not considered voting twice. The reason it isn’t is because there’s a bar code attached to every single ballot that connects that ballot and that intended voter with the ballot."
If you vote in person, the mail-in absentee ballot will be cancelled when it does eventually arrive at your local election office. If the ballot happens to arrive before you check in at your polling place, you won't be able to cast a ballot in person. The electronic poll book will be updated to indicate you've already voted in this election.
"There’s no harm, no problem doing that at all. It happens all the time, even under the best of circumstances."
Separated stacks
Voters have been told for months that ballots postmarked on or before November 3rd could still be counted even if they arrive between Nov. 4 and Nov. 10. But Republican activists -- including Rep. Eric Lucero -- sued to challenge that 7-day grace period.
The US 8th Circuit Court of Appeals last week ordered Minnesota to set aside ballots that arrive during the seven-day grace period. Simon said they will be counted and added to the vote total but will be segregated and saved as a separate group of ballots.
If a presidential campaign successfully challenges the validity of those late-arriving ballots, those ballots will be removed from the tallies and vote totals will change in all races up and down the ballot.
"Nothing happens automatically other than segregation of the ballots," Simon explained.
"For anyone to invalidate a ballot they are going to have to step up and pull the trigger. They are going to have to step up and ask the court to specifically invalidate certain ballots that are in that pile."
Simon said it's far more likely to a court challenge of the ballots that come in during the grace period if the election is close. If a candidate loses by a substantial margin, he's less likely to try to get those ballots thrown out of the total.
It's generally assumed that the late-arriving ballots would favor Democrats because 80 percent of Republicans polled said they planned to vote Nov. 3.
