Shame on you Minnesota (Senate)

On Friday, the Minnesota Senate pushed through a bill requiring a specified photo-ID be presented to vote. 
This bill is a big-government solution without a problem. In 2010, after a Republican temper tantrum over their candidate losing the Senatorial race to Al Franken, they launched pointless extensive, epensive investigation into alleged cases of fraud.  After spending a lot of money,  the cases they claimed demonstrated fraud were dismissed with only a couple of cases that were caught by the checks and balances in place, and a few cases of felons who voted with chaotic corrections department paperwork that was ambiguous as to their status.  The number of cases of actual voter fraud in any decade, but particularly as tracked since 2000 doesn't support the conservative belief that they are losing elections because of fraud.  In some cases, counties to conduct the investigation sought by the conservatives who were absolutely convinced they were robbed required the hiring of one or two additional full time people, just to satisfy their paranoia.  Minnesota has long been studied as the example among specialists in electoral law for our clean elections.  Only the low information paranoiacs on the far right believed otherwise, but they disrupted more important activities that better used tax dollars for their unsupported IDEA, a fantasy.
They were and are simply being poor losers who can't accept they didn't persuade the electorate fair and square. 
This is the same party that didn't accept the governor's race recount despite being down by nearly 9,000 votes, and that disregarded the costs of their side of the recount, stiffing counties with unpaid bills.  That hand recount only served to show the insistence in spite of all the objective evidence to the contrary that our election system works, and works well.  That is the same party that could not find enough people to participate for their side in the previus hand recounts of 2008 and 2010, and who consistently cannot field enough people to serve as election judges - the people they want to do all the extra checking that will slow down voting, and make it more inefficient.  If people were discouraged under our model system from voting, if we make it take longer and be harder, there will be fewer people of any political persuasion willing to do their civic duty - either voting or serving as an election judge - not more.
This should concern the Republicans who are facing a disastisfied and apathetic base of voters, as demonstrated by the low number of people turning out for primaries across the country, not just in Minnesota. The number of Republicans participating is lower than 2010 AND lower than 2008; lower by a LOT of people.  So this is the wrong time for Republicans, even acting in their own self interest, to  be proposing this legislation.
They love the idea, they love spending tax payers money, but they don't care enough to show up and participate in actually conducting an election as an election judge.  That reality wouldn't fit with their FEAR about how voting really works.

So much for the small fiscally responsible government party.

So much for less intrusive government.

So much for participatory democracy.

The ACTUAL findings of the state-wide investigation for the 2008 election were that there were 47 cases of voting fraud, 43 of which were committed by felons who, mostly, didn't know they weren't allowed to vote.  Hennepin County District Attorney Mike Freeman stated, regarding these cases,

" the voter fraud cases represent a tiny fraction of all ballots cast in the 2008 general election, which is when President Barack Obama was elected. He also said that despite the charges, investigators didn't find evidence of people working together to commit voter fraud. 

There was no organized or coordinated effort to induce improper voting. There was no involvement of any campaign or any candidate. And there were no cases charged of non-citizens improperly voting," Freeman said.    

In Minnesota, the county attorneys are responsible for prosecuting voter fraud in their jurisdiction.  County Attorneys are elected, and the Minnesota County Attorneys Association (MCAA) is bi-partisan, reflecting that cross section of elected officials.  In a 2010 report, in response to the Republican unfounded hysteria, this report was generated by the bi-partisan MCAA:
The Minnesota County Attorneys Association’s (MCAA) executive director John Kingrey says Minnesota Majority’s reports of massive voter fraud in the 2008 election were “widely overstated” and “frivolous,” adding that the conservative group’s demands of those investigating suspected voter fraud were draining county public safety resources.
MCAA was at a press conference last week where a report was released that showed voter fraud in Minnesota is extremely rare. The report’s authors, Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota and the Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance (MUUSJA), said the report demonstrates that government-issued voter identification is unnecessary.
MCAA’s Kingrey said that Minnesota Majority sent county attorneys’ offices information last year alleging widespread fraud in the 2008 election. He said the “the drumbeat continued” when the Republican Party of Minnesota backed up Minnesota Majority’s claims and then counties were served with an order by KSTP-TV to retain absentee ballots from the 2008 election.
“County attorneys take voter fraud very seriously; there is no discretion for county attorneys in this manner,” Kingrey said. Minnesota Majority produced a list of more than 1,000 names of Minnesotans that they suspected of illegal voting.

“The list generated wildly overstated the number of felons that voted,” said Kingrey. “Many actually were legal voters; they were allowed to vote under Minnesota statute.”

He continued, “This matter has taken up considerable prosecutor and law enforcement involvement and resources at a time of dwindling budgets. It also impacts the strapped budgets of our public defenders and the courts as well.”

He added, “Our priority must remain public safety. The diversion of resources to investigate frivolous reports of voter fraud causes nothing to protect public safety.”

He said that several counties in the Twin Cities area had to hire new staff to deal with Minnesota Majority’s lists.

That is the reality, contrary to the extremist right winger's fantasy that is not factually substantiated, an ugly disenfranchising fantasy on which they would try to enact a constitutional amendment.
One case of abuse of absentee ballot voting was found, in Anoka, from 2008, and that was caught and prosecuted by the system already in place, not voter ID.  That case was not about a candidate or a party conspiring to rig an election, much less a case of democrats "stealing" an election; it was about an overactive 'helicopter' mom going too far on behalf of her daughter:

In a statement, Nyhammer said she was the mother of the 19-year-old woman and allegedly admitted that she had completed the absentee ballot for her daughter and voted absentee on her daughter’s behalf because Nyhammer did not think her daughter would be voting in Mankato.

None of these rare cases of voter fraud would have been prevented by Voter ID.  Over-eager mom had to pay $200 in court costs, and was placed on probation for a year because she is not a threat to either the security or the purity of the electoral process in Minnesota.
Secretary of State Ritchie has made a counterproposal that would be more effective and less costly for voter identification, and which would not disadvantage certain groups the conservatives expect to vote for democratic candidates, but they reject that proposal even though it is significantly better and non-partisan.  Better voting and cleaner more secure elections is NOT their goal.  From the PiPress:

Dayton, Ritchie offer 'poll book' as voter-ID alternative By Doug Belden
dbelden@pioneerpress.comtwincities.com Posted: 03/08/2012 12:01:00 AM CST March 9, 2012 5:5 AM GMT Updated: 03/08/2012 11:05:43 PM CST

As a bill asking Minnesotans to amend the state constitution so voters would be required to show a photo ID began its way through the House on Thursday, Gov. Mark Dayton and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie unveiled an alternative they say would be faster, cheaper and less likely to disenfranchise voters.

With an electronic "poll book," eligible voters who have lost an ID or no longer carry one could come to the polling place and have their electronic information pulled up from state records, Ritchie said.

He said about 84,000 Minnesota voters don't carry photo ID, but in many cases, they would have photos in the state drivers' database. For those who don't, another ID could be scanned in or a photo could be taken at the polling place. "We would not be disenfranchising anybody and we would not be breaking the bank," Ritchie said.

The rare  number of cases of voter fraud, and the kinds of cases, aligns well with studies from other states, Ohio in 2004, and Oregon in 2000, where independent studies found voting fraud incidence at .006% and .0009% of the electorate. Essentially, the incidence of fraud was rare enough to be effectively non-existent. The number for Minnesota was 47 out of 2,107021 votes cast (for Governor), or .002% of all votes. So, the evidence, the ACTUAL facts, that which you are asked to provide in court, that which you must explain in the scientific method, simply does not support that the US, nor any state within it, has some sort of rampant, election changing, problem with voting.  There is no evidence to show there is a problem and there is no logic or evidence to show that this solution would fix the tiny problem of felons voting that were discovered.  Those were not a problem with people pretending to vote as someone else, they were a problem with corrections records.
The reason they aren't seen as necessary, as opined by the Brennan Center for Justice, among others, is that voting fraud is an illogical act unless it can be highly coordinated AND assured to be effective. In short, why risk 10 years in prison to miscast 1 (or 10) vote(s) among 2 million? It isn't logical, and therefore, isn't done. To create a larger pool of fraudulent votes would require the assistance of dozens if not hundreds of people, and doing so would risk any of those people being caught, or simply coming forward to tell the truth, then or at any point in time later. Again, there simply is no evidence that such activity has gone on, not in any great number - again there were 3 votes fraudulently cast in 2010 by people whom we can be pretty certain meant to do so. Consequently, it has been long held as well established that it isn't necessary to restrict access to the poles quite simply because there is no interest or compelling reason to try to abuse them. Our system of checks of registration needs updating, but people aren't off creating busloads of people to go fake registrations - it's just too risky.
The flip-side though, e.g. making voting easier, IS part of the core of democracy. For tens, if not hundreds, of years, we Americans, we shining beacon on the hill, grasped that being inclusive in allowing everyone to vote who was of the appropriate age, and who had been in the country long enough to have an opinion, was a grand, supreme ideal. If a handful of nefarious people abused that system, they'd be drowned out by the vast chorus of the overwhelming voice of the people who would stand in opposition to their position OR, if the people backed the same position, then their nefarious acts would be purposeless, merely adding a few votes to a huge number.
We believed that voting was such a fundamental right that we overturned Jim Crowe laws, poll taxes, and the like because free and unfettered access to self-determination quite simply trumped worries about cheating. The only cheating we actually saw, in fact, was when the wealthy paid people who would otherwise not have voted, to vote for their (the rich and powerful's) platform. We DID pass laws against paying people for votes, but that wasn't curtailing access, it was to ensure people voted with their hearts, for that which THEY wanted, rather than what someone gave them money to support. In the end, we appeared to have decided that we'd far prefer to have 100,000 MORE people vote, and have a few slugs cheat, than stop or impare those 100,000 from voting much like we say we'd rather have 100 guilty men go free than jail one innocent man. We didn't want to "jail" the rights of 100,000 innocent people, to catch 47 guilty.
Or, so it was. Until now... So, some more facts..The Brennan Center for Justice, the law review of the prestigious NY University Law School, estimates requiring voters to go get photo ID's, requiring them to ensure they have it on them when they vote, and the validation requirements these bills bring along with them, will disenfranchise (stop from voting) about 5% of the entire electorate. In Minnesota in 2010, roughly 2 Million people voted. This bill, if the Brennan Center is right, will stop 100,000 Minnesotans who would have otherwise voted, from voting. Even if The Brennan Center is off by a factor of 10, and only 1/10 that number are dissuaded from voting, it will still stop 10,000 people from voting. It will stop them because people already find voting to be something of a chore, it's on a Tuesday (no good reason other than we started there), they have to take time away from work or find someone to watch the kids, and so on, if you put another obstacle out there, then the attitude for some will be, "why bother", as so many already believe. Our goal shouldn't be to create further ambivalence toward being involved in our country's future, it should be to breathe fire and life into their desires to be self-determined, if not, we might as well turn the keys over to a king or queen, or more correctly in our case, to the plutocrats who already control much of our government with their vast campaign cash.
The Brennan Center has also offered opinion by various experts that in fact the 5% of the people who won't bother to vote, or who will be turned away will be disproportionately poor and/or elderly. The poor because they may not chose to spend their scant dollars on new Id's, the elderly because finding decades old documents to get an ID, when they've let their driver's license expire, may be well nigh impossible. And this, ladies and gents, in the end is the aim of the authors.
The Republicans claim they think there is rampant fraud, but clearly they can see the evidence isn't their. So, either they believe something despite a virtually total lack of proof, a fool's belief at best, or their aim is to discourage voters, and not just voters, but a certain block of voters. Why would they do that? Why would these self-appointed small government, low regulation champions (HA!!!) seek to enact sweeping, restrictive laws making it more challenging for some people to vote, and thus reduce the likelihood they'd vote?
Well, I suspect you can guess, but here's the opinion of experts, they are doing so quite frankly because it will benefit them. Those who will be less likely to vote are MORE likely to vote Democratic (and NO, I'm not saying all poor vote for Democrats or all elderly do, but that the percentages of those least likely to be able to afford the ID or to find paperwork, generally tip toward Democrats).
So the irony is that these Republicans, these champions of our constitutional ideals, intend, in order to "protect the integrity" of a system which is not questioned as being highly reliable, they intend to suppress votes. They not only want to stop fraudulent voting, but in bill after bill across the country have also proposed doing away with early voting, something which has propelled states like Oregon to the highest levels of voter participation in the country. They want to do away with same day registration, they want to limit absentee voting. This isn't about fraud, it's about suppressing votes.
For many years I've heard complaints, from the left and the right, about what a shame it is that so few people vote, especially in off-year elections. They complain about the ambivalence of voters. We, as a nation and as a government, spend money encouraging people to exercise their rights, and this, this would do exactly the opposite, it would and will discourage people, will make them MORE ambivalent, not less, will make it more likely, not less, that they will not vote. If for no other reason than that, we should not do this. But worse, it will block at least many hundreds who TRY to vote, from voting, maybe many tens of thousands, all to stop 47.
There is shame here on the Minnesota Senators who voted for this ineffective, ham-handed sham. There frankly is no greater threat to democracy than to begin restricting the right of the people to vote and thus be self-determined. Well, except for the other threat, that threat being the ambivalence of those who sit idly by and watch it happen. In truth, those who should be most ashamed aren't the Senators, but instead all of us rank-and-file Minnesotans who put these snake-oil salesmen (and women) into office in 2010. We over-reacted when President Obama and the Democrats couldn't undo in 2 years what Bush and the 'caveat emptor'-no regulation Republicans allowed to transpire in the preceding eight. We foolishly put those same snake-oil salesman back in office and what we've gotten is "Stand Your Ground" legislation allowing anyone with a gun to shoot first and claim self-defense later, and proposed amendment to our constitution after amendment when Republicans can't get past Dayton's veto. They want to side-step the process, make irrelevant the governor's office when they can't win fair and square, and rule by tyranny of the majority, preventing gays from having equal rights under the law, and worst of all, to try to fool the electorate into believing that this bill will actually stop fraud and won't harm the ideal of allowing nearly everyone to vote.
It's ultimately up to you, the voter to decide what you want. Do you want to make it more difficult to vote, probably causing 100,000 to stay away or be prevented from voting in order to stop 47 cases of fraud? Or do you want to stand up against the rich and powerful who sponsor these kinds of bills, knowing they are bad policy, and protect the basic rights of Americans and with it, the wholly American ideal that we protect the rights of the innocent first and against any worries about the acts of the guilty? Will you let hope and belief in the goodness of the average American rule your view, or will you succumb to unproven, unwarranted fear?