GOP Wants Additional Vetting of Absentee Ballots Statewide

(KNSI) — Republican-endorsed candidate for Secretary of State Kim Crockett is running on a platform of election security, including adding citizen election judges to the ballot board.

Kim Crockett joined KNSI’s Ox in the Afternoon program Monday and expressed support for standardizing how absentee ballots are vetted across the state.

Crockett says any county auditor is free to add citizen election judges to the ballot board for the election. They include a DFLer and a Republican official who would sign off on the mail-in vote as being legitimate, similar to what is done for votes cast in person. Current Secretary of State Steve Simon has advised auditors against the need for such a step. Crockett says she wants to take a different tack.

She says the first step is to update the law. “There’s a state statute that’s poorly written that needs to get fixed, so that county auditors feel compelled to do it.”

Crockett says the inclusion of citizen judges on the ballot board would lead to increased faith in the results. “I want citizen election judges looking at those ballots because I want people to look at Stearns, Benton, and Sherburne results and say, ‘We know that a Democrat and a Republican were sitting at a table together going through the envelopes [checking to see] if they were legit.'”

Simon won the last Secretary of State election in 2018 over Republican John Howe, securing over 52% of the votes. He is running for reelection unopposed in the DFL primary.

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