The Bemidji Pioneer’s Kent Kaiser asks all the right questions about photo ID and voter fraud in this article in Sunday’s edition. Frankly, the DFL’s argument that fraud hasn’t been found is a flimsy argument. That shouldn’t be the threshold that has to be met before photo ID’s become Minnesota law.

Instituting a photo ID requirement for accessing a ballot in Minnesota is an obviously needed election reform. In poll after poll, the overwhelming majority of people support this measure, including 78 percent of people polled by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in 2006 and 75 percent of people polled at the Minnesota State Fair by the state Legislature in 2001.

Furthermore, support for this measure is bipartisan: In the Pew poll, 71 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of Independents, and 86 percent of Republicans supported this measure.

I believe election fraud is probably rare in Minnesota. Yet my belief is not enough. Whether fraud is rare or commonplace in our state is, in fact, unknowable. It is highly suspicious that liberals resist injecting this modest measure of integrity into our election system. It is especially suspicious that they are reluctant to alter our state’s system of allowing people to register by showing up at the polls with no proof of identity or residence at all and using only another person to vouch for them.

Most Minnesotans are unaware that the vouching system does not even require that the people doing the vouching actually know the identity of the persons for whom they are vouching; the system requires the people doing the vouching to attest only to the registrant’s residence in the precinct.

Why won’t the DFL insist on people who vote meet the state’s voting requirements? This isn’t a theoretical question. Why did the legislature write vouching into law? The DFL’s defense that vouches can be contested is irrelevant. It shouldn’t be law in the first place. What happens when there isn’t someone at a polling place to question a person’s residence?

Mandating a photo ID passes constitutional muster and it makes perfect sense, especially considering the illegal immigrant population. Isn’t it possible that someone could vouch for an illegal immigrant? If that’s possible, why don’t we slam that door shut tight?

I’d further argue that there’s ample justification for adding another identifier to the Minnesota drivers license, namely a field where a legal immigrant who is in the United States legally but isn’t a resident would be required to identify themselves as not being a legal citizen of the United States.

This point by Mr. Kaiser is impeccable in its logic:

Ballot access should have the same degree of integrity and accuracy that ballot counting does. A simple count is not enough to prove that integrity and accuracy exist in the ballot counting system, so we have a recount procedure to prove it. Similarly, there should be safeguards in the system to prove that there is integrity and accuracy in our ballot access procedures. Indeed, the accuracy and integrity of the count and recount procedures are valid only if the first step in the process, distributing ballots, has accuracy and integrity, as well.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s common sense, which apparently is in short supply in the DFL legislative caucus. Until the process includes the appropriate safeguards at each step of the registration/voting process, we won’t have election integrity.

There’s an old fishing maxim that says the strength of your fishing line is only as strong as its weakest link. In other words, if your fishing reel is filled with 8 lb. test but there’s a nick in the line that will snap with 2 lbs. of pressure, then you’re fishing with 2 lb. test line.

That maxim is applicable to our voting system in the sense that our electoral system’s integrity is only as strong as its weakest point.

If any part of the process is flawed, then it’s highly possible that that flaw can corrupt the entire process, no matter how tight the rest of the system is.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight this point from Kaiser’s op-ed:

Election technology now exists, and is being used in other states, that allows for swift and accurate election registration, Election Day check-in, and post-election administration. Such technology relies on interface with driver’s license or state-issued photo ID. (Some of this technology is even made by Minnesota-based companies; see, for example, http://www.datacard.com/). It is similar to technology that Minnesotans are accustomed to seeing when they go to purchase fishing and hunting licenses. Just as card readers have eliminated the need for bait shop clerks to write out paper fishing licenses, a card reader installed at a polling place could be employed in voter registration and check-in on Election Day.

A quick swipe of a photo ID through a card reader could fill in the data fields in the state’s voter registration system, thereby eliminating common data-entry mistakes that take place with the current pen-and-paper registration system. A quick swipe of such ID at the sign-in table in the polling place on Election Day would eliminate the need to line up by parts of the alphabet, would conserve thousands of pounds of paper currently used to print voter rosters in every election, and would greatly speed up the lines in the polling places.

There’s just alot to gain from implementing a photo ID provision into Minnesota election law. Because we’d improve the integrity of the voting system while streamlining the voting process, there isn’t a serious argument for why this isn’t implemented during the early weeks of the upcoming legislative session.

There are ideological and political reasons for not implementing photo ID requirements. Still, those are the weakest, least defensible positions to hold. What’s worst for the DFL legislature is that photo ID attracts dominant multipartisan support, with 71 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of Independents, and 86 percent of Republicans supporting photo ID legislation.

If the DFL wants to stand in opposition to legislation that receives multipartisan support, that streamlines Election Day voting and that restores integrity to the voting process, that’s their choice. It just wouldn’t be a wise choice.

Technorati: Elections, Election Integrity, DFL, Photo ID, Republicans, Independents, Democrats, Polling, Pew Research