Protect My Vote finally has an ad up:

Survey USA polls show that the Voter ID Amendmennt appears to be cleared for landing – barring, naturally, a major change in the landscape – while the Marriage Amendment could be a squeaker.

Let’s start with the Marriage Amendment.

At first glance, the news is good; the amendment is up 50-43.  Now, in elections for Constitutional Amendments, blanks ballots are counted as “no” votes.  So if every single “Undeicded” in this poll either votes “no” or doesn’t vote on the amendment, it flails 51-48.  On the one hand, that seems unlikely; it’s a lot more likely that some of the undecideds will break for the amendment; if an eighth of the undecideds vote “yes”, the amendment passes in a 50-plus-one-vote to 50-minus-one-vote squeaker.

Of course, it’s unrealistic to expect that the landscape will stay the same.  Both sides are going to pour money into this state on this amendment in the next seven weeks.  Given the deep pockets behind the left’s “grassroots” efforts, I suspect they’ll deploy a lot more money.  I suspect, as I have all along, that his vote is going to be a tight one.

Voter ID, on the other hand?

The proposed Voter ID Amendment is unchanged since the last round of polling, over a month ago.  It’s ahead by a 2:1 margin, with only 7% undecided.  IF every single undecided vote is a “no” or an abstention, the measure will pass with a 3:2 margin.

The “yes”  vote crushes among all age groups – even moreso among young voters (which makes sense; they’re the ones that see their classmates being approached to take part in the scams); it wins among every party and ideological stripe except among Democrats and self-identified liberals, and across all regions, income brackets and levels of education.

This measure is going to pass resoundingly.

Gary Gross, writing in the maddeningly inscrutable “Examiner”, recounts a trip to a Stearns County Commission (St. Cloud) meeting last May by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.

At that meeting, Ritchie handed out an op-ed whose chase was cut to with this money quote:

“Minnesota’s counties currently do an excellent job of administering fair and open elections across a state with significant geographic challenges. The lack of any significant voter irregularity for decades supports this assertion.”

Clearly, the purpose of the piece was to campaign against the Voter ID Amendment.

Which is great – provided that Ritchie was working on his campaign time. Not his SOS time.

But according to a Data Practices request on the subject, the trip was paid for as part of his SOS gig:

A Data Practices Act request was sent to Ritchie’s office asking whether Secretary Ritchie had been reimbursed by taxpayers for the trip. Bert Black gathered the information and responded to the Data Practices Act request. Here’s his response:

 

Thank you for your follow-up message. The staff person in our Fiscal Division who has these records was out yesterday, so I had to wait until today to get the information you requested.

 

Since the trip of May 15, 2012 to Waite Park, Minnesota was part of the Secretary’s official duties, Secretary Ritchie was reimbursed for mileage. The reimbursement was for 148 miles at the standard rate of $0.555 per mile, for a total of $82.14.

 

Best regards,

 

Bert Black

 

Office of the Secretary of State

 

And that is just plain unethical, if not illegal. (And when I say “if not illegal”, I’m really saying “I don’t know that it’s not illegal”).

Apparently in Mexico “disenfranchising voters” is less an issue than “not being seen as a banana republic with an election system taht can be seized and manipulated by those in power”.

You might call our system “Third World,” but that would be an insult to the Third World. As Fund and von Spakovsky note, to register to vote in Mexico a voter must provide a photo, a signature and a thumbprint. The Mexican voter-registration card includes holographic security, a magnetic code and a serial number. Before voting, voters have to show the card and have the thumbprints matched by a scanner.

So – provided all this security works – every Mexican can at least hypothetically be assured their vote isn’t negated by some fraudulent or fictional voter.

But remember – we have the best election system in the world.

Because apparently relentlessly repeating “we have the best election system in the world” is all it takes to make it so.

(SCENE:  A press conference on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol.  Gretel Anderson-Rage of the League of Women Voters, Mike Boing of Common Cause MN and Irving Blotnik of the ACLU-MN are hosting a group of speakers, as two reporters, a homeless guy, and Carrie Lucking (of Alliance for a Better Minnesota) look on.

BOING:  We are here to bring the voices of Minnesotans who will be disenfranchised by the Voter ID bill if it’s passed.  We have four speakers for you today.  I’d like to introduce the first; representing the Deceased-Minnesotan community, Elmer Torstengard.

TORSTENGARD:  (Looking a bit pale)  Hello dere.  I just want to make sure the rights of dead people are upheld  We worked long and hard for this country, and our voices deserve to be heard.  Why should the fact that I died in 1992 silence me?  (Shuffles back to seat)

ANDERSON-RAGE:  Thank you, Elmer.  We are here today to bear witness to the voter suppression inherent in this bill, which will disenfranchise 100,000… (LUCKING waves arms, points fingers upward) 200,000 (LUCKING frantically waves, points arms way up as she jumps) 500,000 (LUCKING frantically makes “go big” sign) Five Million Minnesotans.  One of them will be Jacob Hemmerling-Doltz, a student at Macalester and a representative of the Duplicate-American community.

HEMMERLING-DOLTZ:  Dude.  I’ve got candidates I support down at Mac, dude.  And back home in Madison, too, dude.  And in Uptown Minneapolis, where I stayed last summer when I was interning with MPIRG.  I’ve made my contributions in all three places, why should my voice not be heard in all of them, dude.  I mean, dude?  Hello?  And maybe Dinkytown  (Sits down)

BOING:  I regret to announce our third speaker, Ingrid Bloff, representing the Inattentive-American community, seems to have forgetten to attend today’s event.  So we’ll move right along to Mr. Mick Maus, who represents the Fictional-American community.

MAUS:  Yeah, like, who says I can’t be living in a laundromat with nine other characters….er, Minnesotans? Just because we don’t meet your antiquated Eurocentrist notion of “proof we exist” doesn’t mean our voices aren’t perfectly valid!   You can’t prove they’re not!  Where are the convictions, huh?  Where are the convictions?  You got nothing!  Suck it!  SUCK IT!

BLOTNIK: Thank you for your attendance.  Just a quick note, you may be breaking campaign finance law by being here, or reading about the event.  Or maybe not.  We haven’t decided.

BOING:  Thank you!

(Group leaves the steps as Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” plays on tinny loudspeaker)

(And SCENE)

One of the Koch Brothers, speaking at a Breitbart meeting at Fox News headquarters while eating Chick-Fil-A and carrying an assault rifle:

“Some critics of voter IDs think the government cannot do this job, but Mexico and most poor countries in the world have been able to register and give IDs to almost all their citizens. Surely the United States can do it, too. Free photo IDs would also empower minorities, who are often charged exorbitant fees for cashing checks because they lack proper identification.”

That racist peckerwood!  Why, you can just feel the contempt for women, whom the Brennan Center said were too stupid to carry IDs with them and were more likely to have had them stolen by their abusive boyfriends and…

…and…

…well, no.  It was one of the men that liberals inexplicably admire the most; Jimmy Carter, back in 2005.  Carter, who up until 2008 was the worst president of my lifetime, finally got one right; recognizes that the virtue of an election system is measured in the integrity and legitimacy of the votes, not  in the amount of wood pulp consumed by making ballots to jam into boxes.

Of course, under pressure from fellow lefties, Carter had to expand on his comments in 2008, noting that it has to be easy and cheap for the poor to obtain IDs.  And the GOP has not only agreed with this, but acted on it.

Democrats who a few months back were praising Chief Justice Roberts for his judicial restraint in respecting the intent of Congress are sniveling like stuck cats that the Supreme Court of Minnesota (SCOM) didn’t find a penumbra emanating from Alida Messinger’s visage forcing them to accept their masters’ complaints without question.

The lawsuits by the ACLU, the League of Women Voters and Alida’s Cause Common Cause  claimed on the one hand that the Voter ID law was just too complicated and not clear enough for public-educated Minnesotans to understand, and on the other than Mark Ritchie had the right to make both measures more complicated and less clear.

I may be a cynic, but I’m frankly amazed the judges disagreed.

And now, the pro-gay-marriage and pro-vote-corruption forces need to do something neither has been able to do:

• The anti-Marriage-Amendment forces need to show the voters a case for changing the definition of traditional marriage a little more convincing than “vote no or you are teh bigot”.
• The pro-fraud forces need to convince Minnesotans that while buying cigarettes or getting a job or buying ammunition or starting a bank account requires that we know someone is exactly who they say they are, exercising our supposedly-precious franchise does not.

It’s a good day.

I’ll await the usual logic-free liberal arguments on both.

UPDATE: Mir. D has an excellent piece on the subject at True North and over at the Neighborhood:

I’ll be honest with you — the Photo ID amendment matters a lot more to me. We’ve been round and round on gay marriage and as I’ve written before, this is a battle that ultimately conservatives are going to lose, mostly because young people are being taught that it is a civil rights issue, especially in the public schools. While I don’t agree with that, the view will prevail and most of the constitutional amendments that are passing in the various states will eventually go away, probably within 10-20 years. At that point we’ll begin the unwitting longitudinal study that will eventually reveal, years after most readers of this feature are pushing up daisies, whether or not gay marriage is a good idea or not. My future grandchildren and great-grandchildren (God willing) will get to suss that one out.

The Photo ID amendment is much more important, because it goes the integrity of elections. Voter suppression is the usual charge you hear, but as a practical matter the real issue is multiple votes and illegal votes. The challenge is getting local election officials and prosecutors, who are partisans, to take such things seriously. Minnesota Majority identified 1,099 cases of felons voting in the Franken/Coleman election and over 200 cases have been either adjudicated or are in the process of being investigated. The rest aren’t going to see the light of day because the local prosecutors can’t be bothered. Franken won the election by on 312 votes…Now the amendments go for a vote. I expect Photo ID to win easily. The marriage amendment will be close. Opponents of both amendments will have ample opportunity to state their case. They just can’t depend on Mark Ritchie to keep his thumb on the scale this time.

And there’s the victory for real justice.

And I never believed the SCOM or Minnesota law had it in ’em.

To:  Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, and the ACLU of Minnesota
From: Mitch Berg, mere peasant
Re: SCOM Decision

All,

Suck it.

That is all.

(more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Many hard words have been exchanged about the 2008 election. Conservatives worry that ineligible voters swayed the election. Liberals scoff because there’s little voter fraud. What if they’re not speaking the same language?

Example: President Obama routinely talks about America’s lack of proven oil reserves. He’s a smart man and is careful with words. The phrase “proven oil reserve” doesn’t mean the oil in the ground. It means the oil you can feasibly and legally pump.

If you can’t get a federal permit to pump the oil, you can’t legally pump it, so that oil is not included in the proven reserve. And to save the planet from Global Warming, President Obama won’t give you a permit.

President Obama is technically correct. All that oil sitting under the ground, waiting for a permit to be pumped out, is NOT part of America’s “proven oil reserves.” As a result, we lack “proven oil reserves.”

What does this have to do with elections? I think there’s a similar language problem. If a convicted felon whose civil rights have not been restored goes to the polling place, signs the register, receives a ballot, marks it properly and deposits the ballot in the voting machine, is that an ineligible ballot? Yes. Is casting that ballot a case of voter fraud? No; he is who he says he was. Was it an illegal ballot? Not necessarily.

It was not illegal for that felon to cast that vote. It’s only illegal if he knowingly did it. If he didn’t know he couldn’t vote, no crime was committed. But the ballot was ineligible and should not have been counted.

When Liberals talk about fraud, convictions and illegal votes, they’re talking about a small subset of all the ineligible ballots. I’m worried about the larger pool of votes that were counted, but should not have been. Nobody seems to have hard numbers. It’s nobody’s job to police the system.

I’m concerned about votes cast by un-restored felons, yes, but also by minors, the mentally disabled who’ve lost their civil rights, and by the dead. But even after extensive conversation with Liberals, I can’t seem to achieve actual communication. We’re talking, but not the same language.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

The Dems have been pretty determined about trying to steer the conversation away from the numbers that actually matter.

There were 321 war crimes committed by the Nazis in World War 2.

“Nonsense”, you say.  “321 would have been a slow week at Dachau, or an off-day at Auschwitz.  That figure is absurd to the point of being a form of Holocaust denial!”

“Nonsense”, one might respond.  “There were a total of 321 convictions for war crimes at the end of the war.  Thus, there were 321 war crimes!”

Absurd, huh?

Counting convictions doesn’t measure the extent of a crime, or any other activity.  At most, a count of convictions measures the number of people suspected, investigated, arrested, indicted, tried and then convicted for one or more activities.

Joe Doakes of Como Park notes the similar absurdity of measuring election issues by counting convictions:

Dog Gone and I have been chatting at Penigma (yes, I know I said I would quit; it was a slip but really, I can quit any time I want).

Hi, Joe.

 She’s convinced voting irregularities are not widespread because convictions are not widespread. There were only 26 felony-level convictions as of 2010 and that’s insignificant in an election with 2.9 million votes cast.

By that standard, rape is rare because there are few convictions. DUI is a minor nuisance because everybody pleads to Reckless Driving so there are few convictions for DUI.

And as some lefties claimed a few years ago, North Dakota was the most corrupt state because it had the highest convictions-per-capita rate for corruption.

And nobody was killed in the Sikh temple in Milwaukee – because nobody has been convicted and with the shooter dead, nobody ever will be. No conviction, no murder. Those six bodies in the Coroner’s Office? They’re just resting (Sikh prefer kipping on their backs).

Except . . . there are six dead bodies lying on slabs. It really happened. Whether or not somebody gets convicted, those six people are still dead.

Counting murder convictions is not the best way to count murders victims. The best way to count murder victims is to count dead bodies left by murderers. Similarly, the best way to count illegal votes is to count votes cast by ineligible persons, not convictions for illegal voting.

The County Attorneys surveyed in 2010 confirmed they investigated 1,531 cases of illegal voting. They know the votes were cast. They suspect the people casting them shouldn’t have, which is why they were investigated. Some cases were false-positives so they aren’t a problem. The rest – whether or not the prosecutor chose to file charges – are votes that everyone agrees should never have been cast. But they were cast and counted into the 321 [!!! – Ed.] vote total that put Franken over the top. And Franken was the 60th vote in the Senate needed to make Obamacare filibuster-proof.

Illegal voting doesn’t have to be widespread to be a problem – a small number of targeted crimes can change a nation. That’s why it’s important.

Seriously, is that so hard to understand?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Because understanding it would negate a narrative that I suspect the DFL has spent years and millions building.

And no, we don’t have a conviction to prove that.

Yet.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Liberals (Dog Gone springs to mind) are fond of citing a 2010 study by the Minnesota County Attorneys saying voter fraud isn’t a problem. Here it is for your reading pleasure.

It wasn’t a study by the County Attorneys. It was a study by two anti-Voter-ID groups who sent a one-page survey to County Attorneys then “summarized” the results.

County Attorneys reported 1,531 investigations of felony-level illegal voting in the Coleman-Franken election. 66% of those investigations resulted in Not Chargeable decisions, so 1,010 cases were dropped. Of those dropped cases, between 50-80% were dropped because the state couldn’t prove the felon knowingly voted illegally. Apparently, felons think they can vote despite the law saying their conviction bars them, so we let them!

Of the remaining 24% of investigations that had been completed and charged (10% remained incomplete at the time of the survey), the survey said:

outcomes were nearly evenly distributed in the following categories: dismissed due to lack of evidence; heard in court; found guilty; and found to commit election fraud

So by my math, that’s 1531 cases x 90% complete = 1377 complete x 66% Not Chargeable = 909 Not Chargeable and 468 Charged -:- 4 = 117 in each category = 117 per category x 2 categories of convictions = about 234 total convictions.

Liberals like to claim that a mere 234 convictions for felony voting out of 2.9 million votes case means there is no real problem with voter fraud. Since there is no real problem, conservatives who push Voter ID must have some hidden agenda. Hey, felons are mostly Blacks, aren’t they? And if felons can’t vote, that law falls disproportionately on Blacks. Conservatives must hate Blacks! That’s it – this whole Voter ID thing is just cover for racisssss laws.

Except . . . we know for certain there were 1,531 illegal votes that should never have been counted . . . but they were. How many felons voted for the Republican instead of the Democrat? Half? Not likely. Far more likely that the disproportionately Black felon population voted like the Black non-felon population. In 2008, with Barak Obama at the top of the Democrat ticket, it’s far more likely that the vast majority of felons voted for Franken.

Counting convictions is the wrong measuring stick. Count illegal votes instead. Take 1/3 of those 1531 felon votes off Coleman’s pile (510) and 2/3 off Franken’s pile (1021) and suddenly, Franken’s 312 win becomes a 199 loss.

Felons for Franken, indeed.

Now, let’s talk about another thing that conservatives worry about but Liberals don’t. In that same election, there were 2,000 votes cast by Dead people, which is plainly impossible and should not have been counted . . . but they were. Whose pile should they come off? Which party historically depends on the “dead vote” to win elections?

Headlines are easy. Math is hard. Democrats know that which is why they incessantly confuse the issue. That’s why this report matters.

Felons for Franken. Stiffs for Stuart Smalley. Fair elections. Pick one.

That’s the big fallacy of the status’ quo’s defenders; it defends on a bit of legal circular logic.  They only count convictions – but convictions are driven down by the fact that “I didn’t know” is a defense in the vast majority of ineligible voter cases.  And they ignore the dead voters, and the thousands of provisional ID cards that are returned to the SOS with “nobody at the address”, and the absurdly false addresses (nine people listed a small town laundromat as “home”) – because there are no convictions.  And there never can be.  Because the system doesn’t find them.  So there can never be any. And the wheel goes ’round.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

The Left’s new chanting point (Angry Clown, Dog Gone) is Republicans would give guns to bad people but stop good people from voting which is wrong because voters aren’t killers.

No, voters aren’t DIRECT killers. They do it by proxy, electing Barak The Fearsome Terrorist Slayer and Al Franken, the 60th vote needed to pass ObamaCare That Will Have No Death Panels. I don’t think the direct-proxy distinction makes a difference.

Conservatives think bad people shouldn’t have guns and bad people shouldn’t vote, either. Liberals agree with less than half of that.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

It’s not so much that libs don’t think bad people should vote.  To put the most positive, pollyannaish possible spin on it as possible, it’s that their unexamined belief is that processing the maxiumum  possible number of ballots on election day is the greatest possible good.  Ensuring that those ballots are from real people, or people legally entitled to vote, or people who have only voted once, falls well below in the priority list.  And that’s if you assume that there isn’t massive fraud, which I do not.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes in re Al Sharpton’s Strib op-ed:

Civil Rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton writes in the Star Tribune to oppose Voter ID because 1 in 4 Blacks, 1 in 5 elderly and 1 in 6 Hispanics don’t have the proper credentials and apparently can’t get them.

Oddly, others can.

The Ramsey County Elections office is next door to the Property Records room where deeds are stored and I spend a fair amount of time working with real estate. I have seen an endless parade of Asian voters the past two weeks. They’re showing up by the van-load. They have guides who speak English directing them to the right office. Older folks are assisted by younger ones. They’re showing up to register and to vote absentee for the primary.

I’ve also seen a few Black immigrants, Somalis or Ethiopians from the way they dress and talk. No “American” Blacks, though. None of the people whose pants are stitched to their underwear, whose caps are on sideways, who have time in the afternoon to prowl the streets looking for 14-year-old girls in Frogtown and who learned to talk from rap videos. Those people can’t seem to make it to the Voter Registration Office.

Plainly, this is not a cultural thing. It’s not a matter of White and Asian people being conscientious and law-abiding while recent illegal immigrant Hispanics (and Blacks whose families have lived in this country for generations) are neither conscientious nor law-abiding.

Plainly, it’s just racissss. And that’s a crying shame.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

And I’ll add that it’s not even a matter of Afro-Americans and Latinos not being conscientious or law-abiding so much as it is the DFL, Sharpton, and their camp-followers in the Media wanting you to believe it; to believe that Black, Latino, elderly and young voters are just too stupid to handle bringing an ID to the polls.

We know better.  Right?

Polling shows that a fairly decisive majority of Minnesotans agree, and support Voter ID.  The left’s response – other than chanting “Disenfranchisement” and “Racism” – is to claim that the process of getting a free ID is juuuust toooo complicated for voters.  And since their strategy does seem to involve trying to win over “low-information” voters – people they can gull into thinking Mitt Romney is a felon who hasn’t filed taxes, that Bain killed a woman, that they’re out of work in 2012 because of what George W. Bush did (or really didn’t) do in 2007), that would be a concern.

As Joe points out, many groups – groups that actually take democracy seriously – are making the logical connection; they’re getting their people registered.    Expect not a few legitimate groups across the political spectrum to extend their ‘Get out the Vote” efforts to getting voters registered as well.

Clearly, for the DFL, it’s easier to manufacture bogus votes than to get their low-information rank-and-file to vote legitimately.

I met my old friend “Lucky” Carroll, long-time DFL political operative and currently head meme-buffer for Alliance for a Better MInnesota, for a drink the other day.  As usual, she’d started before I got there.  Long before.

ME: (to waitress): Bring me a vodka sour. (to Carroll)  So whatcha been up to?

CARROLL:  (four empty cocktail glasses in front of her) I’ve been working to defeat the Voter Suppression Amendment.

ME:  Ah, the Voter ID Amendment.  Right.  So why would you want to defeat an amendment that would ensure that the integrity of our election system isn’t eroded by systematic fraud?

CARROLL:  Because we have the best election system in the world! (Finishes gin and tonic)

ME: OK well, currently the amendment is running about 2:1 in favor.  So what if a solid majority of Minnesota voters say that they want Voter ID?

CARROLL:  Then we’ll sue until the law gets thrown out anyway!

ME:  Wait – so you’ll disenfranchise a solid majority of Minnesota voters….

CARROLL:  The best voting system in the universe!

By the way, lefty organizations with deep pockets are pouring money into advertising against the Voter ID amendment.

The Minnesota Majority – and their “ProtectMyVote” organization – have been doing most of the work,and they are not with deep pockets; if you can peel off a buck or two to help, it’d be much appreciated.

More results from the Survey USA poll from yesterday.

I gotta confess, this one surprised me.  Conventional wisdom has it that the Left’s suffocating blanket of spending and publicity, as well as the purported apathy of many voters to the issue, would scupper the Marriage Amendment.

According to this poll – which, remember, oversampled Democrats, 38 to 32% – it’s just not so:

An amendment to the Minnesota Constitution on the ballot defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Will you vote FOR the amendment? Against the amendment? Or not vote on the measure?

52% Vote For

37% Vote Against

5% Not Vote

6% Not Sure

Remember, “No answer” counts as a “no” on Constitutional votes in Minnesota.  So let’s say these results hold up ’til election day, and that every single “Not Sure” response in this poll ends up voting “no” or not voting (which won’t happen); the measure passes 52-48.

This, I did not expect.

And I’m a tad gratified to see that the poll shows people seem to be resisting, broadly, the DFL’s torrent of lies and innuendo about the Voter ID Amendment:

An amendment to the Minnesota Constitution on the ballot would require voters to show photo I.D.’s in order to vote on Election Day. Will you vote FOR the amendment? Against the amendment? Or not vote on the measure?

65% Vote For

28% Vote Against

2% Not Vote

4% Not Sure

If the “Fors” stay put, and every single “Not Sure” votes against it (again, not gonna happen), the measure passes by almost 2:1.

While gay marriage isn’t an issue I care much about – I support civil unions – I’m glad to see that on at least a couple of issues, according to one mildly-DFL-leaning and slightly DFL-oversampled poll, the DFL’s huge, expensive, and slimy propaganda war seems at this moment to be crapping out.

There are quite a few fake Minnesota IDs out there:

23,705 cases of possible fraud to be exact.

People like Pedro Chavez, aka Jose Cisneros, or Carlos Santiago, or Antonia Ledesma — four separate Minnesota driver’s licenses.

Detectives say the Albert Lea man was illegally collecting welfare for a decade, using real Minnesota driver’s licenses obtained with phony documents. He was convicted of forgery, and deported.

“Is it a fraudulent birth certificate, is it a fake DL from another state?” Neville said. “Yes in all those cases as well as taking someone else’s documentation and presenting it as their own.”

And who, pray tell,m is on the case? (Emphasis added):

 Of these 24,000 driver’s licenses, about 10,000 have been canceled. Beyond that, not much else has been done. Not a single name has been given yet to the Department of Human Services to check for welfare or food stamp fraud, and no names have been given or the Secretary of State to check against the voter rolls.

Make sure you brought quarters for the meter.  Mark Ritchie’s office is too busy editing the legislature’s copy.

Leave aside the obvious conspiracy theory – that Ritchie wants to debase the driver’s license as a standard for identification in the run-up to a probable victory for the Voter ID amendment; while the vast majority of the fake IDs were no doubt taken out in the interest of some sort of personal or financial fraud, you can bet that nine out of ten of the criminals who vote, vote DFL.

And that’s the last thing Mark Ritchie wants to upset.

A federal judge ruled yesterday – the affrontery of it all is almost breathtaking – that federal law doesn’t preclude states from making sure its voters are actually eligible:

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle ruled there was nothing in federal voting laws that prevent the state from identifying ineligible voters even if it is close to the upcoming Aug. 14 election.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit earlier this month to halt the purge, saying federal voting laws barred the effort since it was within 90 days of a federal election. U.S. officials also said the list used by Florida had “critical imperfections, which lead to errors that harm and confuse voters.”

I’d say “it’s amazing what a very low opinion Democrats have of voters”, but then I think about the people who vote for the likes of Mark Dayton and Betty McCollum, and I shut right up.

Hinkle in ruling from the bench said federal laws are designed to block states from removing eligible voters close to an election. He said they are not designed to block voters who should have never been allowed to cast ballots in the first place.

And there’s the key.  Republicans favor making sure all voters are actually eligible.  Democrats would allow everyone to the polls, as many times as they want to go, to avoid the faintest shred of appearance that they’ve excluded anyone, whether they should be voting or not.

Most Minnesotans get this, of course – which is why the Voter ID amendment is polling close to 20 points above the opposition.

Although he said “questioning someone’s citizenship” is not a trivial matter, Hinkle also said that non-citizens should not be allowed to vote.

That’s just good common sense.  Also the law.

But the Democrats are hoping, as in all elections, that a plurality of the ill-informed, the lazy and the entitled will sway this question, too.

Dallas Pierson – who, his roving camera and excellent vid-blog “MNCD4 Conservative” may be one of the better journalists in the Twin Cities alternative media – happened by the DFL convention in Rochester over the weekend.

And what he saw boggled the mind.

The DFL was proposing a rule change allowing absentee balloting for presidential straw polls.

Rick Varco – a DFL activist from Highland Park and part of St. Paul’s DFL machine – objected:

Varco:

I’m against this for three reasons.  One, I don’t believe the Central Committee can come up with any mechanism that will genuinely prevent anyone from printing up a stack of absentee ballots, submitting, them, and submitting them for a presidential candidate.

Got that?  The sanctity of the DFL’s straw polls – the meaningless non-binding votes for President held on precinct caucus night – demands the sort of scrutiny…

…that are racist and exclusionary for general elections?

Chuck Repke – the fellow who in 2007 demanded that Tim Pawlenty be tried for intentional homicide for the 35W bridge collapse – followed up:

Your are opening yourself up for absolute insanityy = the potential exists for someone from Citizens United to pack our caucuses with bought and paid for ballots!  There is no way to protect that, because we allow anyone to attend a caucus!  We would then have to allow any ballot at the caucus, no matter which Koch brother paid for it!

But, apparently, not ACORN or George Soros.

It’s touching, the concern the DFL has for the sanctity of their internal elections leading to their meaningless endorsement.  Now, if only they had the same care for the state’s electoral system.

Listen.  You might be tempted to laugh – until you realize that they are trying to prevent precisely what their party does to our general elections.

From “Common Cause Minnesota”‘s Twitter account yesterday afternoon:

Common Cause, ACLU, and League of Women Voters plan big announcement tomorrow on voter ID amendment. Stay tuned ‪#stribpol‬

Let me guess – a lawsuit by a couple of astroturf DFL fronts to try to use the courts to block the will of the elected legislature?

Faced with an amendment that will likely pass 2:1 this fall that will also peel off enough fraudulent votes to cost them some of the close elections (like the last Governor and Senate races), the Democrats are turning on the spin.

Emphasis added to this bit here from the MinnPost:

But opponents say it will make voting more difficult for those who don’t have  the right ID, such as seniors who no longer drive, college students, soldiers overseas and homeless people. And they argue that there’s no evidence that voter fraud is a big problem, and that there are laws in place already.

Dave Thul – regional blogger, activist and senior non-commissioned officer – pointed out in the comment section yesterday:

Every member of the US military on active duty is required to have and carry a photo ID. Every member of the military overseas is required to have said photo ID on them at all times.

Also, every US military member has in his or her unit an appointed Voting Assistance Officer, responsible for implementing the DOD directive that every member of the military will have the ability to vote. Voting assistance officers have the same legal authority as a notary public to sign off on a ballot to certify that the voter provided photo ID.

Huh.  I don’t recall anyone in the media checking on that.  Catherine Richert?  You out there?

Another one’s been making the rounds, this time from the MinnPost article linked above, with emphasis added::

…many voters do not realize that it is not just any government-issued (or approved) i.d. they would need to present at their voting place. It will be a special i.d. for voting only and those who want one will have to purchase and present a government-issued birth certificate or perhaps passport in order to get the voter i.d. card. I’m not sure of the current price of a birth certificate, but a passport cost $100 a few years ago.

The Pro-Voter Fraud crowd – the DFL, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, Common Cause and so on – are passing this meme around (or at least not saying it’s not wrong; they’re telling the students, the poor, and especially seniors that their driver’s license, state ID or existing passport won’t suffice for voting.

I expect the DFL to start telling that same crowd that Mary Kiffmeyer wants to collect bone marrow samples before voting.  Indeed, expect that previous sentence to pop up on at least one leftyblog.

Dayton issued a “mock” veto of the Voter ID Amendment today:

Governor Dayton has ceremoniously vetoed a proposed constitutional amendment that would require people to present a photo ID to vote. Dayton’s veto won’t prevent the measure from going to the voters in November but he said he’s vetoing the bill because the Legislature sent it to him in bill form.

Well, that and to give the DFL a chanting point to put in front of the same gullible Elmers that put him in office in the first place.  “Well, heck, Ethel, if da Govner vetoed it, I should vote against it, ya?”

“Ya”.

Dayton says the amendment could disenfranchise thousands of voters, including overseas military members and seniors who are unable to drive.

Although those numbers come from Mark Ritchie, who can’t even count real ballots; how good could he be at counting estimates?

Dayton says ending same-day registration and replacing it with a provisional balloting system could lower the state’s nation-leading voter participation.

And that’s the DFL’s most curious chanting point on elections; the idea that we cart more people to the polls than other states, absent any insurance that those votes have any integrity, is just bizarre.  By that measure, the elections in North Korea are the best in the world, since 99+% of North Koreans make it to the polls.

If the ballots themselves have no integrity, the number that get cast is meaningless.

“This amendment is a proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Dayton said. “It goes far beyond its purported intention to require photo identification. Instead it dismantled Minnesota’s best in the nation election system…

…which is sort of like the Minnesota Twins’ “Best In The Nation” first series in Baltimore.  Or the Vikings’ “Best In The Nation” 2011 season.  Or the Go-Go football team’s “Best In The Big Ten” record last year.

Marks Dayton and Ritchie are going to turn the phrase “Minnesota’s Best In The Nation…” into a synonym for overweening, malignant mediocrity.

I went to downtown Saint Paul this morning to rent a room for the evening.  I figured if I was going to be dealing with Minnesoita’s chanting class – the mass of chant-bots that the unions and astroturf groups like “Take Action Minnesota” can spawn to protest wherever needed – I’d need a drink or fifteen.  I’d no doubt be too hammered to take the bus, much less drive.

I went to the front desk to reserve my room.

The clerk – a chipper Hispanic woman named Rosa – asked me for my ID.

“That’s ironic, isn’t it?”, I chuckled.  “I’m here to cover people who think there should be no photo IDs to vote, and you’re asking me for a photo ID to get a hotel room!”

“Ha ha, sir”, Rosa answered through a half-hearted smile.

“Sorry about that”, I said.

“No, I’m sorry – it’s my fault.  We have some, um, difficult guests”, she said, sotto voce.   “They were up partying all night.  They don’t tip – they say tipping is “for the 1%”, and that the waitstaff and bellhops should do their job “out of solidarity with the 99%””.

“Oh, no.  Who are they…”

She shook her head as the door opened.  “Can’t talk now”, she said, looking at the group coming through the door.

A group of short men in bright pastel clothing with chemical tans walked through the lobby.  Curiously, they were chanting.  I recorded the chant, and present the transcription, unedited.

Oompa Loompa, Doopity Dounted

We demand every vote be counted!

Oompa Loompa Doopity Dipocrit

If you ask ID, then you are a hypocrite!

One of the men, in an intonation-challenged Irish tenor, then took a solo

The 99 percent can’t get an ID!

They’re for the one percent, not for you or for me!

What if you ask me to prove who I am?

That’s what I call…

[Bass voice takes over]

Intimidation!

The rest of the group came in:

Oompa Looompa Doopity Doblem

There never has been a voter fraud problem.

Oompah Loompa Doopity Remand

We insist on no IDs like the Oompa Loompa Doompa Scroompa Froompa Loompas Doompity Demand!

They marched up the hall to their rooms, except for one who ambled over to the desk.

“You don’t see that every day”, I said.  But Rosa had already turned her attention to the fellow from the group.

I turned, looked down, and recognized the fellow as Edgar Torvaldsbladson – better known by his Twitter handle, “EightballEdgar”.  He shoots a lot of pool, apparently.  At least, I don’t think he’s a crack user, and I’m pretty sure it refers to pool.

“Can I help you, sir?” Rosa asked.

“YES! PLEASE SEND BOOZE TO MY ROOM!” EightballEdgar exclaimed.

The volume startled me.  Rosa didn’t skip a beat.  “Er, that’d be a room service request.  Do you have a credit card on file…”

“WHAT ARE YOU, A 99PNJ?”

“A what?”

“NINETY-NINE-PERCENT NUT JOB!”

“Er, sir?  I just have to make sure the booze is paid for…”

“FINE!”, he bellowed, digging a card out of the oily  brim of his little green homburg.

“Hey, EightballEdgar, how ya doing!  Long time no see!”

He looked up at me.  “I AM HERE TO PROTEST THE DISENFRANCISEMENT OF THE POOR BY THE VOTER ID BILL AS PART OF A SPONTANEOUS DEMONSTRATION”.

“Ah.  Well, cool.  Hey – did you have to show the hotel an ID to book your room?”

“SO?  BOOKING A HOTEL ISN’T A RIGHT IN THE CONSTITUTION, LIKE ABORTION”.

“Um, yeah”, I answered as Rosa wrinkled her nose silently in distaste.  “I didn’t say it was; merely that society takes all sorts of prudent measures to ensure people are who they say they are”.

EightballEdgar looked at me.  “YOUR SUIT LOOKS STUPID”.

“Perhaps, but that’s not really the point”.

“YOU WERE PULLED OVER IN 2004 FOR DRIVING WITH EXPIRED TABS!”

“I was indeed.  Now, about the topic of voter ID.  You’re right.  Hotel rooms aren’t constitutional rights.  Voting is.  But we demand ID as a reasonable restriction on many constitutional rights.  For example, my Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is spelled out in the Constitution, and is defined as an individual right which was incorporated in very literal form on the States by the Heller and McDonald decisions.  But as a reasonable restriction – to ensure that I am who I say I am – I have to present an ID to buy ammunition or rifles, and show an ID and pass a background check to get a permit to purchase a handgun, to actually buy the handgun, and to apply for a permit to carry that handgun, not to mention to rent time at a shooting range to actually practice with the thing!”.

His eyes opened wide, and he started hopping up and down.  “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  WHAT PART OF “WELL-REGULATED” CONFUSES YOU, YOU IDIOT!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!”

“It meant “can hit what they aim at”, but that’s neither here nor there.  Let’s say I want to carry out my first amendment right to petition to seek a redress of grievances…”

“YOU AND YOUR FANCY LAWYER TALK!”

“Er, what it means is, I went to court to file a lawsuit against this guy that slandered me last summer – long story.  Anyway – I filed my petition.  I gave them my cash.  They asked to see a photo ID, to make sure I was who I said I was”.

“BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TEH CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO SUE!”

“Er, that’s what “petition for redress of grievances” means.  It’s a constitutional right.  An important one, as it happens”.

EightballEdgar looked at me.

He looked at me some more.

“YOU WERE PULLED OVER IN 2004 FOR DRIVING WITH EXPIRED TABS!”

“O…K…” I said as Rosa stifled a chuckle.

“EXPIRED TAB NUTJOB!  EXPIRED TAB NUTJOB!”  He waved his little arms around, trying to get the attention of other passersby in the lobby.

I turned to Rosa and handed her my credit card.  “Make that two bottles of Glenlivet in Room 821″.

“Thank you, sir”, she said, smiling as I signed for a 25% tip.

I walked to the elevator, with EightballEdgar walking behind me, chanting “EXPIRED TAB NUTJOB!  EXPIRED TAB NUTJOB!” until I dropped a piece of aluminum foil on the ground, which diverted him.

A few minutes later, I was off to the Capitol.

To: All you Government Union people heading down to bum-rush the Legislature
From: Mitch Berg, your DJ for the day
Re: Mood Music

This one’s dedicated to you and your effort to cheapen democracy:

No, it’s not a compliment. If you listen to it anyway…

(And no, it doesn’t matter that “Joe Strummer was a socialist”; the song is pretty acerbic about unions…)

As this post appears, the unions and the Twin Cities astroturf community are gathering at the Capitol to bellow, shout and chant for the right to have Minnesotans’ votes counted as many times and places as the DFL needs them to be counted.  They are going to try to sway the Senate, which will vote this afternoon on putting the Voter ID Amendment on the ballot for this November, where it will likely pass by a huge margin, making vote fraud and DFL hegemony juuuuuust a little more difficult. They want to keep Minnesota a Cold Chicago.

If you’re reading this blog and you’re not one of the occasional liberal sock puppets who chimes in occasionally, you probably have a job.  You may be thinking “I can’t make it to the Capitol at noon for a rally”.

Baloney.

Call your Senator.  Even if you have a DFL marionette for a Senator, they count the numbers of calls, and they pay attention to them.

Let them know that the droogs that are stumbling around the Capitol today don’t speak for you.

And if you are represented by a good conservative?  Encourage and thank them for standing up for democracy with integrity.

We can win this one, and win it big.

…but I’m going to repeat myself.  It’s a paragraph from a post I wrote last night for this morning.  As I wrote it, I thought the paragraph stood up as a post on its own.

Mark Ritchie claims that something like a fifth of all Minnesota adults lacks an ID for one reason or another.  (He’s referring to driver’s licenses.  Which is its own bit of misleading rhetoric; the DFL is trying to convince the not-so-savvy – the DFL base, really – that voting would require some ID above and beyond a driver’s license).  The numbers are BS, of course.

Still, I’m wondering if I am alone among all of the people in Minnesota who has to have an ID to drive a car, open a savings account, enroll my kids in school, buy a firearm or ammunition, buy alcohol, open a safe deposit box, get medical treatment, pick up a prescription, turn oneself in for an outstanding warrant, adopt a pet, get your pet out of the pound, pay a traffic ticket, use a credit card, write a check, rent an apartment, carry out any business with the government, withdraw money from the bank, deposit money in the bank, cash a paycheck, get a passport, start a new job, enroll for a class, get on a plane, buy a lottery ticket, get a hotel room, get a marriage license, rent a car, file a court action, apply for a loan, close a mortgage, collect bail paid for erroneous arrests, enroll your kid in daycare or buy Sudafed to want to say shut up, quit your whining and get a free freaking ID?

And do Mark Ritchie’s legions of phantom, ID-less Minnesotans – 20% of the adult voting population – somehow get around in this state without driving, saving, spending, schooling, getting jobs, dealing with banks or governments, marrying, traveling, sueing, borrowing, buying or sniffling?

How do they do that?