What is wrong with requiring a picture ID to vote?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

35. Well, considering that 30 states all at once have voter ID bills (written by ALEC) either passed

or on the ballot as referenda (which is what happens in Minnesota), I think there's plenty wrong.

Here in Minnesota, the question SOUNDS innocent as stated on the ballot: A photo ID would be required, and the state would provide one. However, the actual TEXT of the amendment, which has not been publicized, adds all sorts of "gotcha" provisions that would require redoing the state's entire voting system, including absentee ballots and ballots of military personnel overseas. It could potentially disenfranchise anyone who moved or had their ID lost or stolen within two weeks of the election. (By the way, you have to prove your identity and address to REGISTER already.)

The "state-issued photo ID" is not defined, and it would have to be free, or else it would amount to a poll tax, which means that a permanent bureaucracy would have to be set up to produce and issue these IDs. (This from a party that wanted to eliminate aid to people who care for a disabled family member in their home and which shut down the state government last summer rather than raise taxes on the richest taxpayers.) About 15% of Minnesota's 3 million or so eligible voters currently lack a state-issued photo ID, and new people would need IDs every year.

Furthermore, the GOP whispering (and radio ranting campaign) has been racist and hate-filled. The radio ranters are telling their audiences that the Democrats win elections only because they "cheat" by taking busloads of welfare recipients and illegal immigrants from precinct to precinct. They claim that this amendment will solve the "problem," even though there is nothing on any state ID that proves citizenship. (I personally know several non-citizens, here legally, who have driver's licenses.)

The potential for racial profiling is huge. I know of precincts in this state where Ole Olson, who has voted Republican for 50 years, would not get asked for his ID, but a dark-skinned person with a Spanish accent (who might be Puerto Rican and therefore a U.S. citizen by birth) or a young person in Islamic dress (who might be part of the first generation of Somali-Americans born in this country) would be questioned.

Even more important, voter impersonation, voting in someone else's name, is exceedingly rare, something like 14 cases nationwide in the past ten years. This Republicanite effort serves two purposes:

1) To bring out the racist vote for their own benefit. This is clear in their "unofficial" radio programming.

2) To distract from the REAL problem: election fraud, such as electronic voting machines, malicious culling of the voter rolls (supposedly to remove "felons," but actually to remove anyone whose name sounds African-American), moving polling places without prior announcement, sending too few ballots or other equipment to Dem-leaning precincts, dirty tricks, intimidation, "losing" ballots, "correcting" totals, and, as was recently uncovered in Oregon, actually altering ballots.

Here's my general rule about Republican initiatives: Even if they sound innocent on the surface, there's ALWAYS a catch. ALWAYS. Today's Republicans don't do "innocent."