Minnesota Official's Same-Day Voter Registration Explainer on Somali TV Draws Online Election Integrity Backlash

On Somali-language television in Minnesota, the state's voter outreach director, Melanie Hazelip, walked viewers through how to vote early. If you are already registered, she said, you don't need to bring anything. You go to your early voting location, usually the county office or City Hall. Minneapolis and other larger jurisdictions add places like libraries and community centers.

For people not yet registered, she said, there are still options. A current Minnesota ID is all you need to register the same day. Without one, a list of acceptable documents is posted on the Secretary of State's website. Her remarks matched the laws on the books, as Fox News itself acknowledged.

The clip was then posted by the conservative influencer account End Wokeness, and the post drew almost a million views. Many users argued the system is too lax. Retired Navy intelligence officer Phillip C. Parrish wrote on X that Minnesota issues IDs to non-citizens with no citizenship marking, and that vouching lets one registered voter clear up to eight others on an oath. Citizenship is required by law, he said, but real-time proof is not. He tied this to hundreds of millions of dollars lost to documented fraud in childcare, nutrition and Medicaid programs, and wrote: "It is not an accident."

Others piled on. Federalist Society co-founder David McIntosh asked on X how this is not election interference, saying Democrats want to tell every non-citizen how to get away with voting. Matthew Brodsky, president of Red Ax Strategies, posted sarcastically that there was nothing to see. Commentator Riley Gaines said the episode shows why passing the SAVE America Act is crucial.

The Secretary of State's office responded in a statement to Fox News Digital. It said it provides information on Minnesota election law to hundreds of nonpartisan community groups every year as part of regular voter engagement. Its outreach director, the statement said, gave accurate information to a local outlet, and her remarks were "misinterpreted and misrepresented by political actors online." With only days left before the election, the office said, it is focused on making sure every eligible Minnesotan knows how and where to vote.

Bill Glahn, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, offered a narrower criticism. Given the timing and the audience, he said, Hazelip should have stressed that voters must be American citizens. He conceded that most Somali immigrants are naturalized citizens, but not all, and noted that a noncitizen was recently sentenced to 30 years in federal prison in the Feeding Our Future fraud case. Earlier this year he said the state's safeguards resemble the law against murder: illegal, but it happens. An oath carries perjury penalties, he said, but someone who signed as Mickey Mouse would not be found.

Two pieces of Minnesota law sit behind the argument. A 2023 law signed by Gov. Tim Walz provides driver's licenses regardless of immigration status, and those licenses carry no marking of citizenship, though such IDs are commonly used to register. And under the vouching provision, per the Secretary of State's fact sheet, a registered voter can vouch for the residency of up to eight people registering the same day without ID. The voucher must accompany them to the polling place and sign an oath verifying their address.

The backdrop includes a September federal indictment charging an Indian national in the country illegally with falsely claiming U.S. citizenship to vote in Minnesota's 2024 general election. The scrutiny also lands as the Walz administration deals with hundreds of millions of dollars lost to social services fraud tied to the state's Somali immigrant community. With the election days away, the dispute is likely to continue, and the line between what the law allows and what critics say it should require remains the center of it.