Former Minnesota lawmaker who backs voting restrictions wins GOP secretary of state primary

By Jacob Knutson

Stickers are placed on a table at a voting location on primary Election Day Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)

Tad Jude, a former Minnesota state representative who has called for imposing new restrictions on voting in the state, won the Republican primary for secretary of state Tuesday.

Jude, who previously ran for Minnesota attorney general in 2022, will face off against incumbent Secretary of State Steve Simon of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, who has championed voting rights in the state since he took office in 2015.

Jude has a slim chance to win in the traditionally Democratic state. But if elected, he’s said he would push to require voters to show photo identification before they can cast a ballot — a significant new barrier to democratic participation in the state.

Jude has also vowed to eliminate Minnesota’s vouching system, which allows a registered voter to vouch for the residency of someone who wants to register or update their registration on Election Day but doesn’t have a qualifying document — like a utility bill or bank statement — proving their current address.

Minnesota law has allowed vouching for more than 50 years and, in practice, it’s seldom used by voters. However, in recent months, national election conspiracists have claimed the system is fraudulent, part of their broader effort to make registering and staying registered more difficult.

Jude has made targeting Minnesota’s voter roll a central part of his campaign. In addition to saying he would increase voter purges as secretary of state, Jude also indicated he would give the state’s sensitive voter registration data to the Trump administration.

The Department of Justice is suing Simon to gain access to an unredacted copy of the state’s voter roll, which would contain highly sensitive personal information on voters.

In the primary, Jude defeated Wendy Phillips, a Minnesota GOP official. 

Phillips, who was endorsed by notorious election conspiracist Mike Lindell, said she would eliminate the use of electronic devices in the state’s election systems, reduce voting to one day, heavily restrict the use of mail voting and completely purge the state’s voter roll if elected.