Many states across the country are failing to essential voter list maintenance. Unfortunately, Minnesota is one of them. County officials in the state are failing to remove duplicate registrants from the county voter roll.

A duplicate registration happens when one person is registered to vote twice. Often duplicate registrations are caused by a person being registered under variations of their name. For example, John Smith is registered to vote under the name John Smith and John J. Smith. Duplicate registrations matter because it provides the opportunity for individuals to vote twice. 

We filed six complaints in six different counties in Minnesota for failing to remove duplicate registrations. Our analysis found 515 duplicate registrations in these counties. And before you ask, yes government records do show that some of these individuals do have two vote credits in the 2020 election.

The most alarming case we uncovered of someone with two vote credits in 2020 is Damain Kingbird. There are two voter registration records using this name. Each registration lists the exact same birth year and the exact same address. The only difference is one of the names has two letters transposed.

According to government records, Mr. Kingbird is a convicted criminal who has been committed as mentally ill and dangerous. He has been found guilty or adjudicated delinquent of crimes, including making terrorist threats, sexual assault, and even sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl. Only the Minnesota authorities can determine if an election crime did in fact occur.

Unfortunately, this problem of duplicate registrants goes well beyond Minnesota. In a report released in 2020, the Public Interest Legal Foundation found nearly 38,000 duplicate registrants on America’s voter rolls. We even found a man in Pennsylvania registered seven times. You read that right seven times.

This is deeply concerning because every inaccuracy on the voter rolls presents an opportunity for fraud and abuse