Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon helped lead a new set of recommendations for postelection reviews amid new scrutiny over audits after the 2020 presidential election.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon helps create national postelection audit guidelines
He said Minnesota already practices each of the recommendations.
August 21, 2021 at 7:13PM
Simon was part of a bipartisan group of eight top state election officials who drafted six new guidelines that the National Association of Secretaries of State nearly unanimously approved at its annual summer conference this month.
"It shows what we are capable of doing even now after everything we witnessed over the last year or so," Simon said.
The secretaries — four Democrats and four Republicans — began meeting in secret when Simon suggested the association weigh in following dubious efforts to relitigate the 2020 election in some states.
Simon said Minnesota already practices each of the recommendations, adding that this month's bipartisan agreement on best practices can also be seen as a "vote of confidence" in Minnesota's processes.
He said the most important recommendation is setting a time frame for postelection audits before an election. The new guidelines also include having measures in place to track chain of custody for ballots and equipment, involving state and local officials in the audit process, transparency around audit methods, using accredited test labs to audit voting systems and educating the public on audit methods.
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