House elections committee stalls on absentee ballot voter verification bill

Minnesota is one of eight states that allows residents to permanently receive absentee ballots.

Rep. Duane Quam (R-Bryon) is pushing for added assurance that ballot casters are who they claim to be.

He sponsors HF3723 that would mandate that county auditors or city clerks submit any absentee ballot applications that weren’t submitted electronically to the Secretary of State’s Office to verify the voter’s driver’s license, state identification card or Social Security number. Office staff would need to do this 60-75 days before an election.

If application information doesn’t match the government database, the voter would automatically be labeled as “challenged.”

“This would prevent those from being sent out to someone who has passed away or someone who has moved to a different state,” Quam said.

Rep. Duane Quam

The bill failed on a 5-5 vote along party lines in the House Elections Finance and Government Operations Committee Wednesday.

Nicole Freeman, government relations director with the Office of the Secretary of State, opposes the bill because of the overlap with current voter verification done through the Help America Vote verification system established in 2004. It shows if voters are alive or deceased and if they have multiple matches for name, date of birth, and last four digits of the Social Security number.

Freeman is also unsure about specifications of the proposed secure website. “What system would our office have to implement to follow the bill as presented?”

The bill would not appropriate funds to create the new secure site, which was a point of concern for Rep. Liz Lee (DFL-St. Paul).

“Creating such a website would probably cost money and time and resources,” Lee said.

J. Kenneth Blackwell, chair of election integrity at the America First Policy Institute, wrote, “This bill makes a targeted, practical, commonsense improvement to Minnesota's absentee voting process by requiring that absentee ballot applications be verified against government identity databases before a ballot is mailed.”