Brick City Blog

Carver County GOP Chair Paul Zunker has responded to my post regarding Sen. Julianne Ortman’s support of Voter ID legislation.

Zunker lists off the usual litany of allegations that Republicans have relied on in an attempt to create the impression that there is a problem with voter fraud.  But the facts remain as I stated in every post I have written about this issue:

In fact, nearly every documented case of voter fraud in this state during the past decade can be traced back to felons attempting to vote before completing their probation, many of whom did so because they weren’t notified about the status of their voting rights.  The DFL-controlled Legislature passed a solution supported by every County Attorney in the state during the last legislative session:  send a letter to felons that clearly state whether or not they are eligible to vote.  The Republican Governor vetoed the bill.

Those are the facts.  No charges have been filed in the Crow Wing county case, no real evidence has actually emerged about thousands of dead people voting, and the alleged U of M vouching case has produced no charges.

Democrats and Republicans have spent literally millions of dollars over the last two election cycles litigating votes in the Franken-Coleman and Dayton-Emmer races.  The finest legal minds on both sides of the aisle have dug through this state’s voting records, and haven’t found any.  Don’t take it from me — take it from Fritz Knaak, Norm Coleman’s attorney, who said the following on TPT’s Almanac following the 2008 recount:

We were looking for fraud, but we didn’t find any.

Republicans could fix the only voter fraud issue that actually exists in Minnesota by adopting the legislation passed by Democrats in the last legislative session.  But instead, they are choosing to make it more difficult for Minnesotans to vote (and let there be no doubt, these provisions will result in fewer Minnesotans voting), and spending millions of dollars to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.  Ortman and the rest of legislative Republicans may have the best of intentions here, but they’re going way too far here.  We have real problems that need solving — we shouldn’t be wasting time on trumped-up ideological battles that don’t do anything to move our state forward.  

[As an aside, Zunker's post uses the phrase "want to make grandma eat dog food" in quotes shortly after an actual quote from my post.  Let me be perfectly clear:  I have never used that phrase, much less say or imply that is a Republican position.]