Photo ID amendment wouldn't have stopped the 0.011% vote fraud in Ramsey County

Minnesota Republicans pushed their Photo ID Amendment as a solution to vote fraud. They assert that there is an epidemic of vote fraud occurring in Minnesota. The only problem is they found no vote fraud. Furthermore, their amendment doesn't prevent any of the vote fraud that occurred.

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.

Joe Mansky, Director of Ramsey County Elections, analyzed voting in Ramsey county between 2006 and 2011 to assess the cost of implementing the MNGOP's proposed amendment.

He found something interesting.

Vote fraud occurred 0.011% of the time. That's 114 convictions out of 1,039890 votes cast in Ramsey County between 2006 and 2011.

1,549 cases out of more than 1 million votes cast were investigated (0.15%) resulting in 123 people (0.012%) getting charged with vote fraud.

102 of those charged were convicts who registered but didn't vote. 20 if those charged were convicts who voted. Photo IDs do not indicate if a person has a criminal record. This amendment wouldn't have prevented 99.2% of the vote fraud in Ramsey County.

1 non-citizen registered to vote, voted and was convicted of the federal offense of vote fraud. Photo ID would have prevented this felony offense.

Once again, the Photo ID Amendment has never been about preventing vote fraud.

^{-- Photo: steaming pile of bull****.}