Voter ID: License to Discriminate

Señalización de lugar de votación en California. 2008. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Minnesotans will be going to the polls November 6 to vote on an amendment to the state's constitution that would require folks to show a legal form of ID the next time they vote.  If it passes, then you just might have voted yourself and others out of that right.

Nearly every adult in this state has a drivers' license with a photo ID on it.  If you have one, you're good to go.  Unless your ID is stolen (identity theft is a big deal these days) or suspended depending on your criminal record.  Then you'll have a heck of a time getting it back.

Or you could be one of those who, for whatever reason, don't have a valid ID.  Perhaps you're a recent immigrant, a student who attends college, a senior who had to quit driving for medical reasons, someone who uses a bike or public transportation, or someone whose circumstances of birth are complicated.

The reason this is even up for a vote in the first place has to do with the Republican-dominated Legislature, which put just as much of their energy into this as they did with the marriage amendment.  Instead of coming up with their own solution, they found a way to bring these volatile issues to the public that didn't require them to vote on it, thus avoiding a veto by Democratic Governor Mark Dayton.

The last two major state elections--Dayton versus Tom Emmer for Governor, and Al Franken versus Norm Coleman for the U.S. Senate--were so close that they required recounts.  Recounts that didn't go Emmer's and Coleman's way.  Later, a pro-amendment organization called Minnesota Majority alleged that voter fraud may have had something to do with the results.  Its executive director Dan McGrath told MPR News that over a thousand votes in the Franken-Coleman election came from convicted felons.  But McGrath also said he couldn't prove it affected the outcome one way or another.

So, in the name of eliminating voter fraud that's in itself a dubious proposition, the Republicans want to fix the election laws so that their candidates can control everything from the state house to the White House.  If the amendment passes, the electoral clock in Minnesota will be pushed back 100 years.  Back then, only men could vote.  African-Americans could also vote, but some states had ways to dissuade them from doing so.

The problem isn't forcing people to get ID's with a bad picture of themselves so they could vote.  The problem is a political party with too much time on its hands dreaming of more power for themselves.  A change in the state constitution could make that legal if voters don't educate themselves about voter ID.