Talking Points: Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon Weighs In On Absentee Voting

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Nearly 1.2 million Minnesotans have already cast their ballots -- that is about one-third of the expected number that will be cast.

Minnesota is one of the states that will be counting votes not just on Election Day but after.

Here in Minnesota and across the country, the biggest early voting numbers are coming from traditionally Democratic areas. And that's not surprising considering Democrats have been pushing early voting by mail for months, while President Trump has raised concerns about mail-in voting.

Minnesota is one of the states that will keep counting ballots that arrive after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Minnesota will count ballots for seven days until Nov. 10.

Other states will count postmarked ballots for a shorter number of days, but some states won't count anything that arrives after Nov. 3. Some analysts believe this could lead to voter confusion.

Secretary of State Steve Simon was a guest on WCCO Sunday Morning.

"Well only confusion in the sense that someone who is paying attention to what the deadlines in other states are, might want to check and recheck what it is in Minnesota," he said. "We have been pretty consistent and clear. So have the political parties, so has the voting rights community. So the message about Minnesotas rule has been drilled in pretty heavily in the last few months."

Other states will count postmarked ballots even longer than Minnesota; the critical state of Florida, where the Presidential race is a dead heat, will allow votes to be counted for ten days after Nov. 3.

The bottom line is we won't know all the results in all the races until days and even longer after Election Day.