DFLers urge secretaries of state to oppose new voting laws across country

What a surprise, The DFL opposes ensuring that only US citizens with voting rights vote in elections. You must have a picture ID to go on an airplane, cash a check, apply for social security benefits or go to a bar. You can however vote for President of the United States by just telling another person you are a citizen, I wonder how that will work the next time I go to Canada to visit my friends. Will the border guard accept my telling them that I am from the USA? No way. I think all the DFL’ers should be criminally charged for conspiracy to commit voter fraud.

I wish Democratic elected officials had been earlier into the fight against restricting the right to vote, but better late than never, and here’s hoping they’re early enough. It still shows a bit of political courage since most of the public is for voting restrictions, thanks to Republicans lying to them about fraud being common and being anything that could be stopped by a photo ID or by abolishing election day registration. I wonder how long before Republicans try to pass a law saying only Republicans are allowed to vote?

Sarge,
To get ON the voting rolls in Minnesota, you need to present a photo ID. In several states, who have already put the restriction in place, people who have voted for decades are being DENIED the vote because they don’t have the ID the Republicans put into the law. You are required to verify your name and address in the precinct and then sign to verify that’s who you are under penalty of it being a felony to sign that you are someone else.

There haven’t been any instances of voter fraud where some says they are someone else in Minnesota in over 60 years.

How would the voter ID law stop abuses like the lack of proper staffing and voting machines that happened in Ohio in 2004? Or badly designed ballots in Florida that were made to be confusing?

The current wave of Voter ID laws are being created purely to prevent legal voters from voting, not stop an imaginary problem.

People ae forgetting that there are a number of problems with Picture ID’s. They are the same problems that happen in the liquor industry. First there are still many people under the age of 21 producing state id’s that are very good imitations of the real thing. If a person is going to commit fraud, I don’t see how having a picture id will solve the problem. They will have no problem getting a fordged id.

Then there is the problem of people who no longer look like their photo. They will get turned away.

This happened in Minneapolis last year. A person went in with their US Passport and the election judge deined them the right to vote, because they did not like the person’s picture. He said it did not look like them. The election judge was a white male – the voter was a black female. Tell me this won’t cause any problems. When talking to women, I have had a number of them admit that their driverls license photo does not look like them anymore, do we start turning them all away?

This may be only end up being only 15,000 to 20,000 people that should have been able to vote, but are now being turned away. The only “fraud” that has been found has been with felons and total under 20 people. They all had state ID’s with pictures. They would still have been able to vote. I just don’t see why we should tell thousands they can not vote when it still will not catch the 20 or less who are not following the rules now.

[...] Read the rest at the Minnesota Independent. [...]

“To get ON the voting rolls in Minnesota, you need to present a photo ID.”

No. You don’t. All verification checks and ID requirements are thrown out the window for election day registrants. Up to 25% of voters use election day registration in a given election and no ID is required!

All of our state’s election laws are designed to look like they create security, while making exceptions for every rule that in reality allow an “anything goes” environment.

“If a person is going to commit fraud, I don’t see how having a picture id will solve the problem. They will have no problem getting a fordged id.”

The 21st Century Voter ID bill would validate a voter’s ID card against the DPS database and thus verify it’s a legitimate ID. To fake an ID and vote with it under that plan, one would have to create a convincing ID card (including a hologram) and encode a magnetic stripe and/or bar code that the system could read AND THEN they’d have to hack into the Department of Public Safety database and implant false data to match the fake ID. Seems extraordinarily unlikely to me.

Setting that aside, by your reasoning, we shouldn’t bother to ID for beer or cigarettes anymore, since kids have no trouble getting forged IDs.

Do you think minors buying cigarettes and beer would increase, decrease or stay the same if checking IDs was eliminated?

Dan,
“All verification checks and ID requirements are thrown out the window for election day registrants. Up to 25% of voters use election day registration in a given election and no ID is required!”

I’m not sure what you are talking about here. Same day registration requires minimum of a driver’s license with the current address. Or you can register with a old license and verification of the current address with a bill with 30 days of the election. Your comment about 25% of same registrations not having the correct info is complete crap.

And just how will judges verify these lovely hi-tech ID’s that everyone will need? This will require new equipment for EVERY precinct in the state. Something like that will create a bottleneck in every precinct and slow voting down. Who will pay for the new equipment? The Koch brothers? Who will create and track these wonderful new government ID’s?

The 21st Century Voter ID bill is a solution in search of a problem. The type of voter fraud you keep harping on hasn’t happened in Minnesota in 60+ years. And in the states that it has been started in, citizens who’ve been voting for decades have been DENIED their vote because they couldn’t get the wonderful ID because of restrictive document requirements. How would your law here prevent that, Dan? And how would your law have prevented the massive fraud that happened in Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000 due to hacked voting machines and corrupt election officials?

The current wave of voter ID laws are being done to reduce voting, by stopping a problem that is not happening. Show me how we can insure a fair vote for ALL eligible citizens, rather than using the law to restrict voting rights.