Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said Tuesday that a worker in his office erroneously linked a partisan website to the state's online tool that helps voters locate their polling places.
In what he called "a serious lapse of judgment," Simon said that after encountering capacity problems on the official website, some voters were temporarily redirected to the web page of BoldProgressives.org, an organization that has backed Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren. He said the link was active for about 17 minutes.
"That's 17 minutes too many, obviously, but it was a contained problem, minimal exposure and by minute 18, we got to it," Simon said in an interview late Tuesday evening, adding that his office had no evidence that Minnesota's voting systems were hacked or otherwise interfered with on Tuesday.
Simon described the staffer as a civil servant in his IT department and said "there was zero political motivation" behind the mistake. In response, Simon said all external websites his office redirects must now be on a preapproved "whitelist" of sites and that at least two employees must approve.
Simon abruptly canceled plans to testify Tuesday before the Senate's state government and elections committee, where lawmakers were expected to question him about it.
Committee chairwoman Mary Kiffmeyer, a Big Lake Republican and former secretary of state, questioned the failure of a "tried and true system that has been around for a long time and has functioned at very high volumes of traffic."
"Secretary Simon says it's all hands on deck to address this issue," she said. "If it's all hands on deck, he should be here to answer our questions."
Simon said Tuesday that he planned to testify in front of two House committees early Wednesday and a Senate committee that afternoon.
