02/12/2011 - St. Cloud Times: Your turn: Voter ID bill would deny many a vote by Niel Ritchie
Your turn: Voter ID bill would deny many a vote
By Niel RitchieAs elected officials grapple with a $6.2 billion state deficit, Republican lawmakers announced recently that they are prepared to spend as much as $40 million to eliminate "voter fraud" in Minnesota.
In addition to requiring that voters present a state-issued ID in order to vote, the bill would forbid legal guardians and health-care workers from assisting disabled or elderly voters at the polls, and institute an electronic system to verify a person's right to a ballot.
That's an expensive price tag to correct a problem that doesn't exist -- or would correct, even if it did.
Last year county attorneys across the state prosecuted 38 cases of voter fraud, all involving people whose rights hadn't yet been restored following felony convictions. That's 38 total cases out of more than 2.1 million ballots cast in November's elections. Convicted felons are allowed driver's license, so a photo-ID requirement would have had no effect on any of those cases.
But as demonstrated in other states with similar laws, it is effective in preventing eligible voters from casting ballots.
Denied a vote
In a news conference announcing the bill, Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer noted that the measure here is based upon a law enacted in Indiana. In 2008, after that law went into effect, newspapers documented multiple cases of eligible voters being turned back at the polls because they lacked appropriate ID.
One of the saddest involved a dozen nuns who were residents of a retirement home at St. Mary's Convent near Notre Dame. The women, all in their 80s and 90s, didn't have driver's licenses, and passports and other means of identification they took to the polls were deemed insufficient under the law. They weren't unique. An unknown but not insignificant number of college students and others without Indiana-issued IDs also were denied ballots.
1 in 10 Americans
More than 1 in 10 of all Americans would be cost their right to vote if required to present a photo ID at the polls, according to a study by the Brennan Center of Justice at New York University's School of Law.
The percentage jumps considerably, the study revealed, when factoring only for people less likely to own cars and carry driver's license -- seniors, minorities, disabled, low-income or those with temporary residency, like college students.
A study by the University of Wisconsin backs those findings. Researchers there concluded that a photo ID requirement would negatively affect the voting rights of fully one-quarter of all state seniors.
Lawmakers who support voter ID laws argue they're not erecting undue barriers because the state will provide one for free. But cost isn't the issue. The process presents a significant and troubling Catch-22 for any individual without a photo ID attempting to get one to vote.
If you don't already have a photo ID, what proof can you present to establish personhood and residency?
America was imagined and created of, by and for the people -- and central to that was the right to vote. It is unconscionable that any state would even consider impeding such a core value of our democracy. That indeed is too high a price to pay. www.sctimes.com/article/20110212/OPINION/102120008/-1/RSSOPINION
