Voter ID group says Minnesota had most convictions for ‘voter fraud’ from 2008

Felons have IDs so requiring ID wouldn’t solve this problem. Am I missing something here?

Just another waste of taxpayers money and time. It won’t pass anyhow so let it go.

How about jobs bills? Anyone?

If they’ve don the time let em in line……..ya know get back into society.

“Fear is the mind killer” frank Herbert from Dune
that’s why the rebubs want you afraid……

So to stop .ooo4 percent violation, this group, probably marching on orders of the corporate lobby group called ALEC, is willig to disenfranchise the hundreds or thousands of voters who use same day voting or who depend on that process to correct the error-prone disqualifications of voters that has regularly occurred in Republican-controlled areas that predominantly take out, without notice, minorities, the elderly, youth and others who only find out at the polls that someone took their names off the rolls. So much for Minnesota leading the country in voter participation levels, which is in all likelihood, the goal of this right wing group..

Joe – Yes, you are.

The vetoed 21st Century Voter ID Bill (SF509) ensures a voter’s eligibility is confirmed by cross-referencing Voter ID data with state databases, including lists of convicted felons and known non-citizens. Current law requires these checks for people who register in advance of an election, but waives them for Election Day registrants. The proposed improvement will enable the same verification checks for all voters, regardless of when they register. Ineligible persons will be prevented from voting to begin with, instead of trying to track and prosecute them after their ballots have been counted (See SF509, Article 2, Section 12). The constitutional amendment accomplishes the same result by requiring all voters to be verified by the same standards.

Paul – Voter ID has 75-80% public support in every statewide poll ever conducted. It’ll pass. Even accounting for fraud, Voter ID can’t be stopped.

Dissed Vet – the ineligible voters convicted for fraud weren’t done serving their time, else they wouldn’t have been charged and convicted. Minnesota (unlike many other states) automatically restores felons’ voting rights upon completion of their sentance.

Paul – the objective is to make it easy to vote but hard to cheat. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

TakeAction – Think about it. The crime is ineligible voter *knowingly* votes. Those convicted admitted in court that they *knew* they weren’t suppoed to vote and did so anyhow, or it was proven by prosecutors, else they couldn’t have been convicted (majority pled guilty). Champion’s inform the felons bill is fine, but wouldn’t have made any difference. They already KNEW. Also, something that’s proven isn’t really a “myth.” Try a dictionary.

Ta!

Dan, I’ve seen you say on video that felons have IDs and photo ID at the polls won’t stop felons from voting. With zero cases of voter impersonation in the nation and your bounty last year going unclaimed, why are you advocating for something you admit on tape won’t solve the problem?

The myth is that fraud is rampant. Of those 113 felons who voted, most are guilty of ineligbly voting, not fraud. Fraud implies intent, and you always ignore that. If you want to increase the number of fraud cases, you should be supporting the bill Pawlenty vetoed, because then there is no excuse for not knowing when released on parole that they are not allowed to vote. Still, I hardly think 0.004 percent is rampant.

I’m an election judge, and there are tens of thousands of eligible, legitimate voters who registered to vote on election day. It’s such a great joy to see an 18 year old come in on her birthday and have her parents vouch for her and vote for the first time. Why should we disenfranchise her and thousands of others in order to maybe stop dozens? Again, if you are concerned about verifying voters who register on election day to make sure they’re not felons, why can’t you have the verification system without the photo ID requirement for all voters? You can’t register by yourself without an ID, and the voter rolls are purged bimonthly and again before every election of felons. You can’t vouch for someone unless you’re already registered, and the vouched for can’t vouch for others, so the vouchers have already been verified either by being checked when they registered or same day at the polls. Wouldn’t that system being used just for new registrants on election day make things more secure but still allow people to vote without causing undue burden or violating the State constitution, article 1, section 17 which says “no amount of property shall be used as a requirement for any voter for any election?”

I read a few polls. Your numbers are a bit high but not by much.

Its really to bad. In WI alone it will cost 7.5 million to implement. Waste of money for a problem so small. It also will take a lot longer to vote. If I recall correctly many people did not get to vote becase the line was to long. Guess what? They are going to be much longer.

Here is GVMNT getting in our lives again.

Dan’s reference to SF509, Article 2, Section 12, appears to be obsolete. The section I’m pretty sure he meant to refer to wound up as Article 2, Section 11, in the final version. It is worth noting that this section explicitly allows election day checking to be limited to a list of known ineligible individuals known to live in the county. As such, it would not comply with the proposed constitutional amendment’s requirement of identical standards. That proposed requirement could be complied with in a variety of ways, for example by loosening the verification of advance registrations. None of the ways is attractive, however.

Bob – read my comment above for answers to everything you wrote except your point about “voter impersonation” (a misnomer – more accurate would be “false identity voting”). There is evidence of voting using fictitious identities (in the form of undeliverable election official mail often referred to as PVC cards) but those cases are impossible to prosecute because there’s no way to determine the real identity of the fraudulent voter. The crime is detectable, but 100% untracable.

Thousands of PVC cards were returned undeliverable (no such person at the address or no such address) after both the 2008 and 2010 elections. After the 2010 election, 399 such instances were referred to county attorneys for criminal investigation – those investigations will, of course, go nowhere because you can’t locate someone who doesn’t exist!

Paul – The 21st Century Voter ID proposal will make voting and especially registering to vote on election day much much faster. Being that the continued function of our republic relies on the people having faith in the outcome of fair, accurate elections (as just government power flows only from the consent of the governed), I’d say $7.5 million for statewide election integrity and confidence is well worth the money.

Compare that to the statewide expenditure of around a billion to put 7 miles of light rail in Minneapolis (benefitting a tiny group of riders on the backs of every taxpayer in the state), which also requires an ever-growing subsidy in the neighborhood of a billion a year, and it seems a pretty small price to pay.

Max – latest draft of the amendment I’ve seen says “equivalent” not identical standards, and “as prescribed by law.”

Where Voter ID has 75-80% support, the notion of equal verification standards polled at 87%! It’s only fair, after all. Why should less responsible last-minute registrants receive privledged treatment? Makes no sense, especially when there’s an easy fix that perserves the convenience of election day registration.

Sorry about the article number – was from memory and the bill went through a number of amendments. Glad you were able to find it despite my lapse.

er.. million a year, not billion!

Well, Dan, I can’t speak to whatever private drafts you might have been involved with. I just know what is in the public record, which is the text of HF 1597 as introduced. It says, and I quote, “All voters must be subject to identical standards of eligibility verification.”

You are right that the idea of equal verification standards seems like even more obviously a good idea than the idea of identifying voters. That’s what your poll numbers reveal: obviousness.

Unfortunately, truth isn’t always obvious. The medical profession has long understood that conducting routine screening for rare diseases isn’t always a good idea — even if the disease in question is terrible, and even if the test has very low rates of false negatives and false positives. If the disease is rare enough, even a test with seemingly very good error rates is likely to primarily result in needless, dangerous medical procedures on perfectly healthy people. That’s because you multiply the very low false positive rate by the huge population of healthy people being subjected to the routine screening. As recent news reports show, lots of people don’t like the idea of turning a blind eye to cancer — it offends common sense, just the way turning a blind eye to ineligible voting does. But it really is possible to do more harm than good.

And the idea of a level playing field seems even more obviously right. Arguing against a level playing field is like arguing against motherhood and apple pie. But you start poking into what exactly that might mean, and it stops sounding so obvious. There aren’t just two categories of registrants, election day and other. Instead, there are a bunch of categories, including several variations of mail-in registration. Some of those are controlled by federal law. Each is subject to its own standards, appropriate to the context. Some allow time for checking, but don’t allow in-person interaction with the registrant. Others allow in-person interaction with the registrant, but not the time for extensive checking. There is no way to make them all identical without some huge change to registration, something far more than even a complete elimination of election day registration.

Dan, that reason those cards get returned is registration forms are hand-written, and the data isn’t always entered correctly. Considering how many registrations there are, that a tiny number returned. If those were attempts at fraud, we should see loads of people showing up at polls where they shouldn’t be, and we don’t. If we had a simple standard for when felons can vote, like if they’re out of jail, they can vote, then even that infinitesimal level of fraud you trumpet would be gone. When advocates of voting restrictions support a simple standard that would end felons voting illegally, then I’ll believe this is really about fraud for them, and not about stripping voting rights from people suspected of failing to vote Republican.