Minnesota Independent

House Speaker Zellers: Voting is ‘a privilege, it’s not a right’

By Andy Birkey | 04.22.11 | 8:04 am

House Speaker Kurt Zellers said that voting is not a right, but a privilege Wednesday evening, the Star Tribune reports. Zellers is not the first conservative to make that claim during the debate over voter ID which is heating up the Minnesota Legislature. Republicans and voter ID advocates have compared showing identification for voting to everything from cashing a check to boarding a plane to buying cigarettes.

Voter ID proponents point to beer, tobacco and plane tickets to bolster case

By Andy Birkey | 03.15.11 | 8:30 am

Is the right to vote the same as the right to buy beer, cigarettes and airline tickets? That seemed to be the argument made by proponents of a bill seeking to mandate photo identification for voters that was heard Monday afternoon in the Senate Committee on Local Government and Elections.

Conservative suburbanites launch Minneapolis voter ID petition

By Andy Birkey | 03.31.10 | 12:02 pm

Two groups — Citizens for a Better Minneapolis and the Minnesota Voters Alliance (MVA) — are attempting to make voting in Minneapolis a bit more restrictive: They’ve started a petition in hopes of making photo identifications a requirement for voting in the city. But as critics — dubbed “fruitcakes” by MVA’s head — point out, most of the activists behind the drive don’t live in Minneapolis, and one of the groups didn’t exist until a week ago.