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Minnesota State Fair Seed Art 2012 (photo: Mpls55408 / flickr)
Not only is Minnesota’s Kiffmeyered amendment version of ALEC’s voter restriction (aka “Photo ID”) model bill useless at stopping the sort of voter fraud it’s touted as stopping, it would also be ruinously expensive for state and local governments to enact.
The steep expense of the Photo ID amendment if it passes was first noticed in the case of Rice County, which would be out around $120,000 — a big financial blow for a largely-rural county of less than 65,000 souls. As bad as that is, it’s much worse for Minnesota’s Kittson County, which is even more rural than Rice: The 4,552 residents of Kittson County would, if this Photo ID amendment passes, get socked with a $730,000 bill.
That’s right, folks: The good folk of Kittson County are being asked by the Minnesota Republican Party to shell out $160 for every man, woman and child in the county, and to pay for something that won’t fight fraud but will make it harder for legal voters like shut-ins, veterans, and college kids to vote.
Worst of all: Rice and Kittson are only two of Minnesota’s eighty-seven counties, and not very big in terms of population. Imagine what the other eighty-five counties (and their taxpayers) will be paying.
All so the Republicans can try to screw a few tens of thousands of Minnesotans out of their right to vote.
(Crossposted to Mercury Rising.)
11 Comments
I’ll confine my sympathies to the voters who didn’t vote for those assholes. To the voters who did, you know what they say about being careful what you wish for.
Ah, but the bill for this will be paid by all residents, not just those who voted Republicans because they got conned into thinking that Republicans were more careful with the people’s money.
The Minnesota TGOP crows about Minnesota leading the nation in voter fraud convictions with 153 cases. Sounds terrible, right? Sure, until you analyze that number. They were mostly felons who wanted to vote. They weren’t impersonating another person, as far as anyone knows. Another point ignored is that the TGOP can’t point to any election that was affected one way or another by these ‘illegal’ votes. Finally, the phrase ‘leading the nation in voter fraud’ is entirely misleading. Why? because Minnesota is one of the very few states in the whole country that keeps track of this. Few, if any, other states keep statistics on ‘voter fraud’ convictions.
Jason DeRusha of WCCO Channel 4 did a good piece on this on his ‘Good Question’ segment a few weeks ago. Here’s a link:
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/video/7614261-good-question-is-minnesota-1-for-voter-fraud/
The thing is, the ALEC amendment being pushed by former Pawlenty Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer does nothing to deal effectively with that sort of fraud.
In fact, back in 2009, Democrats and Mark Ritchie had proposed a law that would have actually dealt with this potential for fraud far more easily and cheaply — and Pawlenty vetoed it after Kiffmeyer said it would cost too much.
As an American, this, of course, bothers me.
However, I have no sympathy for Democrats on this. They have hinted and leaked stories and whined about vote caging and election fraud for years.
They controlled Congress from January 2007 to January 2011. They even held hearings, proving unequivocally that election machines can easily be fixed or hacked.
Did they ever once during that time even try to pass a bill stiffening penalties for federal election fraud or a bill making sure all the kinds of activities we know about are indeed illegal in federal elections–and specifying what ID could or could not be required?
Even if Republicans would have obstructed it, I would have tried again every month and made the Republicans go on record as supporting things like vote caging and election fraud.
As for the ID, how long have Republicans been talking about this? What efforts have Democrats made to help, say, disabled people, get to a place where they can get valid photo ID?
Can you guess why Democrats have taken no steps?
Two words: federal law.
They have taken steps — but legal action costs money, which tilts the playing field in favor of those with money to burn.
You point out the existence of Federal law that trumps the ALEC actions, and indeed the ALEC laws and other anti-voter tactics are being overturned when challenged as I have already pointed out, but the Republicans and their ALEC sponsors are counting on being able to tie this all up in court for years. They have much, much more money than the good guys, and they know it.
Besides, you undermine your own argument by pointing out that Federal law trumps what the ALEC crowd can dream up. If the Federal law on the books suffices, why should you ream out the Dems for not coming up with what would be redundant new laws, as opposed to doing what they are already doing, which is to fight the ALEC laws in court using existing Federal law?
& #8. . .
I think the GOP/ALEC interest in this is not the end result — they’re smart enough to know Fed law will trump.
But the controversy, court intervention, etc., is the useful end in itself. Roil the base, no?
That’s why I’m confining my sympathies to the voters who didn’t vote for the assholes.
Sorry for the off topic, PW, but I haven’t seen anything from KrisAinTX on the Hutto school district tax increase vote:
Voters approve 13-cent tax rate increase proposed by Hutto school district
Kudos to Kris and Hippos United for their efforts to stave off cuts to the school budget.