Implementing the Photo ID Amendment would cost Ramsey County $1.75 million

Joe Mansky, Director of Elections for Ramsey County, analyzed the constitutional amendment that Minnesota Republicans put on the 2012 ballot. He estimates it will cost his county $1,747,000 to implement the changes this ballot measure would require.

It's a pretty high price tag to prevent the 1 case of vote fraud in Ramsey County between 2006 and 2011 that Photo ID would catch. That's out of 1,039890 votes cast during the period.

There were 113 other convictions, but they were for convicts voting which a Photo ID wouldn't prevent.

Don't forget that the Photo ID Amendment has never been about preventing vote fraud. It is about vote suppression.

This amendment eliminates same-day registration.

It eliminates Absentee Voting and replaces it with a provisional system which disenfranchises military, student and elderly voters. The intended consequences is it is much harder to vote for students, poor, minorities, military and the elderly. Primarily strong DFL voting constituencies.

Let's examine the cost break-down:
350 extra staff hours to process requests for IDs in 2014.

440 extra staff hours to process requests for IDs in 2016.

Voter education would cost $250,000 based upon what they did for implementing Ranked Choice.

Each polling location would need two secure computers. These computers would contain the DMV Driver's license database. They would need to replace these PCs every four years. It will cost the county $500,000 every four years.

Assuming an average of two poll books for the election day registration station and three poll books for pre-registrants (which the legislature is likely to authorize,) we could need an average of five poll books per polling place. Including an average of two additional poll books for each city absentee voting location, plus an additional 10% in reserve to backup malfunctioning unites, we would need a total of 974 poll books countywide. The estimated cost of the additional poll books (other than those deployed to the election day registration stations in each polling place) is $750,000, which is likely to recur every four years.

Mansky estimates that two additional election judges per polling location would cost $174,000 per election.