getting a drivers license is not a right=opening a bank account is not a right. he has his rights and privileges confused. voting is a right!!!

but you are not one of the poor in our society. You are someone who can afford these things. While most people do have an ID, not everyone does, but they still have a right to vote. What about an 18 year old who doesn't drive yet? What ID does she or he have? I can vouch for my child or neighbor now, what happens with the ID requirement?

Article 13, Section 12 of the Minnesota Constitution gives us a right to hunt and fish. You need a license to do that. Jim says you need an id to get one. There is one example of a right.

This discussion of whether voting is a right or a privilege is interesting. If it can be taken away from you, is it a right or a privilege? Voting can be taken away from you. So what does that make it?

If I understand the proposal correctly, ID will be available for free.

There are a few 18 year olds that do not have driver's licenses. But what exactly is preventing an 18 year old from getting an ID? The 18 year olds I know today are getting credit cards, bank accounts, etc. If you want to function in society, then you need an ID. If you don't need one at 18, you are going to need one sometime soon. So why not get one right away? Why wait until you are 20?

When my son was 4, he had a photo ID that complied with this proposal. When my daughter was 6, she had a photo ID that complied with this proposal.

Let's all keep in mind that this is a constitutional amendment. It is not enabling legislation. When the lottery amendment was passed, it was only a few sentences long. The legislature then has to pass laws the place the lottery into service. The same thing happens here with the voter ID. Some people are speaking about issues that will be addresses by future legislators.

In response to John Kysylyczyn, while many proposals have included not charging for the ID itself, there is still an embedded illegal poll tax even with that provision - actually, two. First there is the fact that the IDs are not actually going to be *provided* for free - merely not charged for. That's an important distinction when we're talking about the poor, homeless, elderly, etc. They'll still need both time and transportation, during business hours no less, to get to a DMV office, which is a substantial hardship for those groups even if it's easy for you and me. The second is supporting documentation. In Minnesota, we charge fairly substantial fees for the documents required to get a photo ID, like birth certificates. As such, the ID is not actually free unless those are made free as well.

Tony, the ID itself, the actual card, can be obtained at no cost. Proving who you are, whether it is for the purposes of getting VA benefits, welfare benefits, applying for college, or reentering the country, may have a cost associated with it. What that cost is, depends upon the situation. The enabling legislation will have to work out these items otherwise the statute could be challenged. The legislature may have to pass within this legislation the requirement that those having trouble establishing their ID may qualify for a fee waiver. It may be similar to the IFP fee waiver available in the court system for those who cannot afford the fees.

The Indiana law which was upheld by the US Supreme Court two or three years ago is probably a good blueprint to look at. The authors of the Minnesota proposal claim that they are using the Indiana law as a blueprint to establish the Minnesota law. Of course, everyone in this day and age sues over everything so I fully expect litigation will sort all of this out. That is just the kind of society we live in today.

"How can a precinct have more votes then [sic] people registered to vote?"
Easy - same day registration. The "registered voters" number provided by the SoS on election results reflects the number registered BEFORE election day, not after.

Broad bi-partisan support? That is not what I heard.

http://www.wewantvoterid.com/polling-results/

I think we can all agree that Minnesota is not a 80% GOP state.

@Tim Johnson

Do you have any polls newer than January 2010 that are NOT Rasmussen polls?

Mr. Clone, mystery person, there have been several polls, I believe some done by what many consider the liberal Star Tribune, which place passage at around 70%.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/121678219.html

Thanks. Now here's a question for you. I recall reading at some point that amendments in MN require at least 50% approval for passage. This implies that a final vote of something like 48% yes to 46% no wouldn't pass. Anyone know if this is true? None of the news reports about the various amendments have mentioned it. I couldn't find anything on google.

Article 9, Section 1, amended in 1898 states that it must be a majority voting on the question in order for the amendment to be approved. Funny thing is that if I recall correctly, the 1898 amendment which changed this did not actually get a majority of those who voted on the question to support it.

With an 80% approval rating, you are going to have over 50% of those voting on the question to support it.

I have no doubt that voter ID will pass. I'm more interested in the implications for the homophobic marriage amendment. That one will be closer.

You don't have to be homophobic to support the marriage amendment. For some, it is about the one man one woman issue. For others it is a financial issue. Some may not want to share certain tax breaks. It is an interesting argument. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find much hard core factual information on the financial argument.

But that is not the discussion. I do know 18 year olds without a driver's license. Will a school ID work? Does the ID have to show their address? Does it have to show their age? Does one have to pay $$ to vote? You do have to pay to get and ID. Again it is the poor and disenfranchised that will be shut out and we know that they do typically vote for democrats, so is this a political ploy to keep democrats out of office?

The enabling legislation that will be required if the voters approve the amendment will spell out all of this.

From the discussion I heard on the Senate and House floor, a school ID may work. But note that not all school ID's are created equal. I have seen some that are as good as driver's licenses and others that you could duplicate on a home copy machine.

Voting is free. ID is free. In fact, the constitutional amendment language states that ID must be free. So no future legislature could tack on a fee.

Who is disenfranchised? No one that I know of. I supposed a person living in a cave in the middle of the wilderness of Montana might be disenfranchised. But then they are only disenfranchised if they want to vote and I doubt that someone living in a cave in the middle of the wilderness of Montana would be a regular voter. I guess it would be interesting to see if the Unibomber was a regular voter.

I wonder, was the Unibomber a Democrat or a Republican?

An amendment to the amendment was proposed that would have allowed school IDs, but Republicans defeated it. The current language requires a government-issued ID. (The amendment would have allowed government-approved IDs.)

The debate was rather long winded so I don't recall the specifics on this issue 100% but I believe that under the current proposal, there would be nothing prohibiting the state to grant someone else the authority to issue ID's if they met certain standards. I'm sure the state currently has the authority to authorize others to issue ID's on behalf of the state. I don't see why they would not. I bet the amendment was opposed because the language was unnecessary.

So, voting rights should be dependent on charity? Where's that in the Constitution?

I never said that. I just know that just like there are citizens who run buses to bring people to the polls, there most certainly will be citizens who will assist people in getting the proper ID, just like there are citizens that help veterans get the benefits that they have earned.

John

Can we count on you, personally, to help disenfranchised voters get IDs?

I love it how people twist terminology. Clone, you crack me up. Calling people that need to get an ID "disenfranchised" is ridiculous. You are only disenfranchised if you have no ability to get an ID and are prohibited from voting.

I'll tell you what Clone, we can both join up and help people get ID's and then we both can help drive people to the polls afterwards. What good is an ID if you have no transportation to the polling place, right?

Mr./Ms. Clone, such a mean-spirited, sarcastic and personal comment really has no place in the public discourse of such an important issue.

@Tim Johnson

It's not an important issue. It's a complete JOKE of an issue. The GOP's business model these days is seeking solutions to problems that don't exist and then telling everyone that their focus is on jobs.

Also, there was nothing "personal" in my comment. Thanks.

Clone, you have to admit that you were getting a little crazy and off track with the rest of us here when you made this comment.

It seems to me that mentioning the unibomber in a cave in Montana is crazy off track talk here...Montana is not in Minnesota!

Well my attempt to add humor was missed by one reader...

Any homeless person would have mail returned as undeliverable, for starters. The best they can do is maybe put the address of a shelter, but they're usually not at the same one a few weeks later.

So the 22,000 are homeless people? I wish I knew that. There doesn't seem to be any idea who this 22,000 group is. Voter ID should take care of that.

Second class votes? You have been listening to too much of Rep. Winkler's propaganda. Cast a provisional ballot. Get your identification situation and address situation cleaned up afterwards. Not that big of a deal.

It is no different than dealing with proof of car insurance issues. Don't have your proof on you, then deal with it later.

Don't beat up on the underpaid poll workers. They do the best that they can.

The constitutional amendment does not prevent these issues from being dealt with. Keep in mind that there is the constitutional amendment, and then the enabling legislation that comes afterwards.

A provisional ballot is no more or less likely to be counted as an absentee ballot under our current system. If you support absentee balloting, then you have no grounds to complain about provisional ballots. Same thing. The exception is that absentee requires little or no identification and provisional does require ID for the vote to count after the election.

Again, that whole "clear it up later" thing may be easy for you, but it's not for everyone. You don't seem to appreciate that fact.

No constitutional amendment that I know of has had three or four pages worth of language on the ballot.

You must not have read my post. The point was that he was not willing to turn in his drivers license. I thought I was clear about that.

Well either you renew your license or you turn it in and get an ID card. The last thing we need is someone driving who shouldn't be. I almost got hit head-on by a 90 year old guy or woman who crossed the yellow line by a half of a car length about two Friday evening's ago on Victoria Street near Woodhill. I traced the vehicle info and that is the info I got back. Whoever was driving shouldn't have been.

Again, he was not driving, and eventually the license was expired, so there was no threat to your safety. He just didn't want to lose the card that was a reminder that he once could. I said that clearly above.

So Tony if I understand you correct, we should not vote for Voter ID because there might be some senior citizens who hold a drivers license that is expired, and they could not drive if they had a valid license anyways, and they don't want to get renewed because the state might take away their expired card and give them an ID card instead, and they would feel bad if this happened? Huh? Are you kidding me?

I believe I moved in the fall and voted shortly after that. I don't believe that public money should be used to pay for the Vikings stadium either, but then others will argue that the stadium will bring money into the state.

Please don't make a phony-baloney martyr of the GOP. Obviously they knew Dayton would veto it. Obviously they knew it would wind up on the ballot as an amendment. It's not as if their hands were tied and they had no other way to save us all from the horrors of voting while Democrat.

I believe Scott is saying that it would've been better if the legislation went thru standard channels instead of the underhanded govern-by-amendment position they've now taken. Mark Dayton is still the chief executive; the only way the GOP can make laws is to override a veto or fall back on amendment city.

The Republicans have a number of predictable pet issues -- many involve taking rights away from various groups. But rather than making any attempt to solve real problems by assembling coalitions, compromising and working with more people, they just fling those pet issues against the wall to see what sticks. They've done it in other states (the complete circuses in Wisconsin and Florida come to mind) and they finally got their chance to do it here.

Seeing as how they have totally failed to address any of Minnesota's long-term issues (budget, education, infrastructure), I do think that voters will rightfully give them the axe this November. I can't think of another clown car more deserving.

Now now Clone, calm down. Whether the governor is going to veto a bill, regardless of the issue, is immaterial. The legislature is a separate branch of government and should carry about their business as the majority decided. If the governor vetos legislation, then the legislature can choose to call an override vote. We have a system of checks and balances and this is how the system works.

Keep in mind that all groups have "pet issues". That applies to the Democrats, Republicans, and even your local school PTA. Most people join groups because there is some issue that they agree with.

Both political parties support issues that changes the rights of individuals and groups. You have a very narrow viewpoint in claiming that rights are taken away. Actually rights are simply shifted from one group to another.

Actually if you step back, you will discover that coalitions and compromising has been done on issues like Voter ID. If you got more involved in politics, you would see that we don't have two groups running the legislature. It isn't DFL vs. GOP. When you look deeper, you see that both of these groups are broken into smaller groups that are often times at war with each other. Have you seen the DFL from the Range agree lock and step with the DFL from the Twin Cities? No way. There are numerous battles between them. Same goes for the GOP. Right now the majorities are similar in size, but when they grow larger, then you start to see them break down.

Actually Clone, the history of Voter ID hasn't created any so called "circuses" like you claim, according to the dozen or so articles I read.

You claim that the legislature hasn't addressed any long-term issues. Apparently you haven't been monitoring legislation or watching gavel to gavel coverage on TPT 2. Voter ID has taken up a microscopic amount of time compared to the other issues discussed this legislative session. You have been indoctrinated by Rep Thissen's speeches.

The sad thing is the issue that has consumed the most amount of time is the Viking's stadium. That has been pushed by members of both parties. Actually that has been a Greater MN vs. metro MN issue. Greater MN wants the entertainment, and they want to force metro MN to pay for it.

On the issue of budget, we now have a surplus. That wasn't all due to some amazing recovery of the economy. Education is doing just fine. In fact, they tried to accelerate the payments back to the schools and the governor vetoed it. Then infrastructure is a pretty broad word but there was a huge bonding bill last year, which was not the normal bonding year, and now there is another bonding bill proposed for this year. That is addressing infrastructure.

Voters will make their decisions this November. Unfortunately though, I think that most will be making decisions based on phony sound bites rather than more solid facts.

Clone, you used the words "Clown car", which is another phony sound bite.

We do NOT have a surplus in Minnesota - that term was explicitly not used in the report, but GOP leadership decided to use it anyway for political points. What we have is slightly less of our massive debt than was expected, no more.

Actually we have more revenue coming in versus what was projected. That is considered a surplus. Of course, the state is in debt because we have billions of dollars worth of outstanding bonds. Until we stop issuing billion dollar bonding bills and start paying off the state's credit card, technically the state will always be in debt from that perspective.

The state currently has money sitting in the bank. If the payments to schools would have been accelerated, there still would have been money in the bank. Not sure what you are talking about with this "massive debt" unless you are referring to bonding debt that I mentioned above.

"Surplus: An amount of something left over when requirements have been met; an excess of production or supply over demand.; More than what is needed or used; excess."

It has nothing whatsoever to do with projected amounts.

Ah, that is what the state has. More revenue received than was budgeted for and all expenditures have been met.