SAINT PAUL – On September 12, 2024, the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State and the Department of Public Safety (DPS) are providing updates on Minnesota’s Automatic Voter Registration System. To date, 65,339 Minnesotans have been successfully registered to vote through the state’s new Automatic Voter Registration system. In addition, 25,572 16- and 17-year-old Minnesotans have been pre-registered to vote through the new system.
With Automatic Voter Registration, eligible Minnesotans who are applying for or renewing a state-issued ID and provide appropriate documentation will be registered to vote without needing to affirmatively “opt-in.” The system includes an intensive review process by state and local government officials to verify registrants' identity and residence and confirm their eligibility to vote. Registrants are also given notice of the opportunity to opt-out. The Automatic Voter Registration system became operational on April 29, 2024.
The Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State and the Department of Public Safety’s Driver and Vehicle Services (DVS) division are partnering to ensure the process works as expected and that only eligible Minnesotans are being registered to vote.
That partnership includes a manual, two-layer review by DVS of all applicant files it sends to the Office of Secretary of State to be registered or pre-registered to vote. During this review DVS flagged a small number of applicant files as needing additional confirmation of voter registration information, including address, name, and citizenship. Out of an abundance of caution, the Office of the Secretary of State has inactivated the voter registrations of any individuals whose registrations DVS flagged. These individuals may be still eligible to vote, but due to human error their documentation was misclassified or not properly saved to the DVS database. The impacted individuals will be notified that if eligible to do so they will need to register to vote online, with their local election office, or in-person at their polling place on Election Day.
The Office of Secretary of State has worked with DVS to add additional quality assurance to the process to catch and correct the instances of human error. Moving forward DVS is using two distinct staff areas to double check all documentation at DVS before applicant files are sent to be registered to vote. DVS is also increasing training for all front-end workers who are classifying documents. Additionally, in some instances automatic voter registration was paused to allow sufficient time to review the applicant’s file.
Due to the thoroughness of the review and verification process, eligible Minnesotans should expect voter registration processing through Automatic Voter Registration to take as long as 12 weeks. Eligible Minnesotans can still and always register to vote online at mnvotes.gov, at their local election office, or in-person at their polling place on Election Day.