Incumbents across the state of Minnesota held onto their seats on Tuesday night, with several familiar faces winning in almost every race. Among those was Secretary of State Steve Simon.
Simon joined News Talk 830 WCCO's Adam Carter and Jordana Green after a long election night in Minnesota.
Simon shared that he mainly had an uneventful night as he continued to work late into the evening, ensuring the state's election was safe and secure before joining fellow Democrats at their headquarters to celebrate several key victories.
"Yesterday [there was] zero campaigning," Simon said. "It was all-day job work, obviously, because we oversee the election system."
The Secretary of State added that after dropping his children off at school and voting himself, he quickly went to work, getting in touch with counties and helping them with any issues they faced.
When it came to any significant issues on Election Day, Simon said that the only problems occurred in Chisago County, where they had a high turnout and needed another voting machine, and a few other counties and cities that had minor problems with getting voting machines up and running.
"Overall, it was a really smooth election yesterday," Simon said.
Regarding turnout across the state, Simon said they don't have final numbers yet, but it looks like a "roughly 61%" turnout which is less than the last midterm but still better than expected.
"Most everyone in the nation was a little down from 2018; that was an unusually high midterm. But Minnesota is in the hunt, I think, to be national champs again," Simon said. "For the last three times in a row, we've been number one in the country."
When it comes to claims of voter fraud, Simon pointed out that during the last election, there were only 17 documented cases of actual voter misconduct.
"That's 17 too many," Simon said, noting that while he wants it to be zero, there were "3.3 million voters in the last election," making it a microscopic number.
While he has no doubt there will be some more cases, he thinks it will again be a small number when it comes to overall voters.
Overall, the day went off without a hitch, and Simon says that he thinks it's all thanks to the system they have implemented, ensuring that Minnesota elections are safe and secure.
"It went really, really well, and I'd like to think, too, it was a vindication of the system itself," Simon said.
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