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Easy to Vote....Hard to Cheat!
The photo ID constitutional amendment
will add integrity to the voter registration election system
currently wide open for fraud
and yet preserve the necessary flexibility
to keep it easy to vote.
Same day registration, absentee voting,
vote by mail and military voting methods
will continue with the photo ID constitutional amendment.
98% of Minnesotans already have an ID
and in the usual Minnesota style,
Democrats and Republicans
plus all our civic organizations
can all work together to help anyone
who has need of the free ID.
An ID is a valuable tool such that
you can hardly function in society today without it.
The cost to the state is the free ID
and should include voter education funding.
There are no mandated costs to local government
in the photo ID constitutional amendment.
Provisional ballots are used in 43 other states.
In Minnesota, this expands the ability of the voter
to cast a ballot that does not exist today.
In Indiana, a similar size state to Minnesota,
there were less than 1 provisional ballots per precinct.
In photo ID states, turnout
has increased or stayed the same
and amongst Democrat more than Republican areas.
There is not one single court case
that has documented voter disenfranchisement.
For example, from the 2008 presidential election,
according to the secretary of state's office,
23,000 postal verification cards
were returned as undeliverable
due to no such person or address.
To this date, there are still over 6,224 voters
that cannot be found.
Local units of government have looked and checked.
Meantime, those over 6,224 ballots are cast and counted.
Without a photo ID shown to an election judge,
how does the election judge know
you are who you say you are?
With 2.3 million pre-registered voters
coming into the polling place,
we have no assurance that
the voter entitled to the ballot is actually the one voting.
We had nearly 1,100 felons
who were not eligible to vote,
yet cast their ballot.
The statute of limitations has ended
and there are over 200 convictions.
Sadly, their ballots still counted
thus disenfranchising other eligible voters.
The difference in that election for the top office
in the state was 312.
It should be decided by eligible voters,
not the cheaters.
Minnesota spends money to catch
and prosecute after the election.
Let's put that money to better use in prevention.
The measure of a good election system
is hardly measured by counting or recounting ballots
that should never have been
in the ballot box to begin with.
Just because we have the end of the [election] system down
is not the measure to use.
The entire system should be conducted
with integrity from registration, casting a ballot to a recount.
It is also being sure that eligible voters
are not disenfranchised by the dishonest.
With vouching and other loose policies,
our Minnesota voter registration system
is full of loopholes and ripe for a major problem
which would be an embarrassment to the state.
To think that liars, cheaters and stealers exist all around us,
but somehow only angels come to vote
is naive and lacks common sense.
The photo ID amendment will keep it easy to vote,
but hard to cheat.