Illegal voting is extremely rare in Minnesota. But even in cases where someone has voted illegally, it’s still more rare that the illegal voting constitutes a willful fraudulent vote. That is, these are not cases of people conspiring to fake their identities. In most cases, the illegal votes highlight a completely different problem with our electoral system.

For example, KSTP is reporting that there have been a handful of charges made against some Washington County voters for illegal voting. I wouldn’t call it fraud, though, because there’s no indication these people were trying to cheat the system.

A widespread voter fraud investigation has led to charges against 11 people in Washington County with prosecutors saying more charges were forthcoming.

All of the people charged are convicted felons who had not been cleared to vote, with most infractions occurring during the 2010 election….

“I didn’t know I couldn’t” said Asst. Washington Co. Attorney Rick Hodsdon, describing what was commonly heard when the suspects were confronted. [Emphasis added].

That doesn’t mean it’s not still a problem. It is, and it’s one we should fix. But it’s not one that could be fixed by instituting photo ID. These people weren’t trying to misrepresent who they were in any way. In a system with photo ID, they would have been properly identified and still allowed to vote.

The problem, instead, is that a handful of felons on probation aren’t being correctly marked on the voter rolls as being ineligible to vote. Without that indication, you could could check their IDs or even scan their retinas and it wouldn’t matter in the slightest.

How should we fix this? It’s really a data-entry problem. We need to modernize our systems to make it easier to link counties’ voter files with data from the Department of Corrections. 

Photo ID would take away some Minnesotans’ right to vote while failing to stop illegal voting. It would be a travesty if we were to disenfranchise some Minnesotans but allow the real problem to continue.