MN Secretary of State Visits Bemidji, Blackduck Schools for Voter Registration Day

Voter Registration Day, which this year was on September 17th, is a civic holiday and a nationwide effort to register voters for the November election. This year, the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State partnered with different political organizations to host events at Blackduck and Bemidji High Schools to help the schools register eligible voters.

All Minnesota public, private, and charter high schools were invited to attend the event live or via Zoom to learn more about the importance of voting and how to register.

“I’m here at Bemidji High School as part of an effort, including over 150 high schools, to emphasize not only voter registration, but pre-registration, which is a new law on the books in Minnesota that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to basically get in line to register,” explained Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. “They fill out the same form as you would when you register, and it makes sure we have more time to screen and filter and make sure we get people who are eligible to vote on the voting rolls. And then at midnight on a student’s 18th birthday, if everything checks out, if they are who they say they are, they live where they say they live – boom, they’ll be on the voting rolls.”

Eligible voters aged 18-24 have less than the general population in Minnesota by 20 percentage points in the last few elections. But Michelle Witte from the League of Women Voters of Minnesota says that if that 18-24 age group is already registered, well over 90% of them vote.