Minnesota § 206.80 - ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEMS

§ 206.80. ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEMS

(a) An electronic voting system may not be employed unless it:

(1) permits every voter to vote in secret;

(2) permits every voter to vote for all candidates and questions for whom or upon which the voter is legally entitled to vote;

(3) provides for write-in voting when authorized;

(4) automatically rejects, except as provided in section 206.84 with respect to write-in votes, all votes for an office or question when the number of votes cast on it exceeds the number which the voter is entitled to cast;

(5) permits a voter at a primary election to select secretly the party for which the voter wishes to vote;

(6) automatically rejects all votes cast in a primary election by a voter when the voter votes for candidates of more than one party; and

(7) provides every voter an opportunity to verify votes recorded on the permanent paper ballot, either visually or using assistive voting technology, and to change votes or correct any error before the voter's ballot is cast and counted, produces an individual, discrete, permanent, paper ballot cast by the voter, and preserves the paper ballot as an official record available for use in any recount.

(b) An electronic voting system purchased on or after June 4, 2005, may not be employed unless it:

(1) accepts and tabulates, in the polling place or at a counting center, a marked optical scan ballot; or

(2) creates a ballot that can be tabulated in the polling place or at a counting center by automatic tabulating equipment certified for use in this state and the ballot is:

(i) a marked optical scan ballot; or

(ii) a marked paper ballot indicating, at a minimum, the date of the election; the name of the precinct; an electronically readable precinct identifier or ballot style indicator; and the voter's votes for each office or question, generated from the voter's use of a touch screen or other electronic device on which a complete ballot meeting the information requirements of any applicable law was displayed electronically.

(c) The use of multiple ballot formats of electronic voting systems in a jurisdiction is not a violation of a voter's right to vote in secret, provided that a record of the ballot formats of electronic voting system used by a voter is not recorded by the election judges or any other elections official in any form.

History:

1984 c 447 s 22; 1987 c 222 s 4; 1988 c 646 s 9; 1997 c 147 s 62; 2005 c 162 s 18; 2006 c 242 s 30; 2023 c 62 art 4 s 115

Official Publication of the State of Minnesota
Revisor of Statutes