SAINT PAUL — Secretary of State Steve Simon announced today that he is taking a new step to increase civic participation among young people and help decrease wait times to register on Election Day.
Over the next nine months, Secretary Simon’s office will be reaching out to nearly 100,000 unregistered Minnesota voters with a monthly mailing encouraging them to register to vote. The mailing will be sent to Minnesotans who recently turned 18 years old, as well as those of voting age who recently received a Minnesota’s driver’s license (see note at end of release).
“I strongly believe we should be doing everything we can to get good habits started early with young Minnesotans, and this outreach effort is an important step in that direction,” said Secretary of State Steve Simon. “This will not only help encourage pre-election registration and decrease wait times on Election Day, but by contacting voters on an ongoing basis we can help ease the volume of voter registration applications received by counties in the last few weeks leading up to the election.”
More than 10,200 Minnesotans will receive one of three mailings in January. Monthly mailings of similar scope will follow. To view all three mailings in their entirety, click here.
The mailing is part of Minnesota’s work with the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). ERIC is a multi-state consortium aimed at improving the accuracy of state voter rolls and increasing outreach to unregistered voters. ERIC provides Minnesota election officials with information derived from comparisons of Minnesota’s voter rolls to Minnesota’s driver’s license database, the Social Security Administration’s death information, and other states’ voter rolls.
Minnesota became an official ERIC member on August 1, 2014, after legislation passed during the 2014 legislation session that gave Minnesota permission to join the organization. Currently, Washington, D.C. and 13 states are members of ERIC. Other ERIC states include: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, and Washington.
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PLEASE NOTE: Registered voters may receive a mailing if their driver’s license or state ID records do not match up exactly to an existing voter registration record. The reasons for records not matching include clerical or handwriting errors (such as a hyphen or apostrophe in a name), or if names and birth dates do not correlate between records.
Recipients who believe they are registered are encouraged to check their registration online at mnvotes.org. If the registration look-up tool confirms that they are registered at their current address, no further action is necessary. If the look-up does not confirm their registration, they are encouraged to register online at mnvotes.org and correct any errors.
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Contact: Ryan Furlong, 651-297-8919, ryan.furlong@state.mn.us