On Friday, Brad Finstad sent a letter to Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon about the "potential of people who are not legally eligible to vote registering and casting ballots in Minnesota elections, including people illegally in the United States."

According to KAAL, Finstad singled out Minnesota's Driver's License for All law, which lets all Minnesota residents get a standard Class D license or ID card without proving their immigration status. He asked Simon for more information about what his office is doing to keep Minnesota's elections secure.

Minnesota already has an answer. It's been public for a while, and it comes with numbers.

The number

In October 2025, Simon addressed exactly this claim. He pointed to a University of St. Thomas study covering a decade of Minnesota elections.

Out of 13.3 million votes cast over ten years, the study turned up three examples of noncitizens attempting to vote in Minnesota.

And Simon added one more detail:

"And by the way, none of the three were here in this country illegally."

None of them. Not one of the three cases involved a person in the country illegally — which is the specific thing Finstad's letter raises.

Simon's summary of the problem:

"This is just not something that happens more than very, very occasionally and for good reason."

The "for good reason" part

The reason is that noncitizen voting is already a serious federal crime, and Minnesota already checks.

Simon has pointed out that a noncitizen voting is a deportable felony. A person without permanent legal status who casts a ballot risks being removed from the country — to cast one vote, out of millions, in an election that one vote will not decide.

Minnesota also runs post-election reviews that identify noncitizens on the rolls, and refers those cases to county attorneys. That is how anyone knows the number is three. The system Finstad is writing letters about is the same system that produced the data showing there is no problem.

And having a driver's license does not make someone a registered voter. That's the gap Finstad's letter treats as a pipeline, and it's the gap Simon's numbers say isn't being used.

Finstad is not first, and this is not new

The Republican effort to tie Minnesota's driver's license law to voter fraud has been running for a while. The House Administration Committee sent Simon an oversight letter on January 22, 2026 on election integrity, and Simon testified before a House committee in April 2026.

So Simon has already been asked, in writing and under oath, by a committee of Congress. Finstad's letter in August asks him again.

That's the tell. When a question has been asked and answered with data, and it keeps getting asked anyway, the asking is the point.

What "election integrity" letters actually do

Letters like this don't change election law. They do three things.

They generate a headline. Finstad's office put out a press release about the letter. Local TV picked it up. The story that lands in a voter's head is "congressman raises concerns about noncitizens voting" — not "study finds three cases in ten years."

They build the case for restrictions. The through-line from "we're concerned noncitizens might be voting" to "everyone must produce a passport or birth certificate to register" is short and well-worn. That's the SAVE Act, and we've written about how the talking points travel and what it would actually do to voters — including married women whose current legal name doesn't match their birth certificate.

They put a target on an immigrant community. Driver's License for All exists so that people who are going to drive to work anyway do it with a license, insurance, and a road test. Tying it to voter fraud isn't an argument about ballots. It's an argument about who belongs.

The problems Minnesota's 1st District actually has

Finstad represents southern Minnesota — farm country. His constituents have been living through a genuine crisis, and it isn't at the polls.

We've written before about Finstad and the tariffs that hit his own farmers. The farm bill just failed in the Senate Agriculture Committee, leaving growers without a reauthorized farm bill since 2018.

Those are real, expensive, unresolved problems in his district right now.

The letter he sent on Friday was about three people over ten years, none of whom were in the country illegally.

Source

"Rep. Brad Finstad sends letter expressing concern over Minnesota election security," KAAL/ABC 6 News. Simon's remarks: "Sec State Simon: driver's license doesn't mean non-citizens vote," WCCO Radio, October 2025. Photo: KAAL.