Back in April, Rep. Steve Simon (DFL-St. Louis Park) warned that the Poll Tax Amendment may be susceptible to a legal challenge, since the proposed language is misleading. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

Simon’s argument was simple: The amendment as worded does not offer a full summary of the changes that would be made to Minnesota law, and therefore is illegal.

Most importantly, it’s the GOP’s intention that the Poll Tax Amendment will usher in the use of provisional ballots in Minnesota. Thousands of Minnesotans — possibly including some with valid IDs — would be required to use provisional ballots, which may never be counted. Yet the proposed amendment doesn’t say a word about provisional ballots.

Today, a group of concerned Minnesotans announced a lawsuit based on similar reasoning:

Is the wording on a proposed Minnesota constitutional amendment requiring a photo ID to vote misleading? A court may decide that issue since The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, along with League of Women Voters Minnesota, Jewish Community Action and Common Cause Minnesota are filing a lawsuit. Today the groups announced the lawsuit.

The Supreme Court should absolutely strike down the amendment, or at the very least specify new language to be put on the November ballot. Voters considering the amendment must be informed that the amendment will end same-day registration, restrict absentee balloting, and require the use of provisional ballots in Minnesota, many of which will never be counted. Amending our constitution should never be done lightly. Voters need to have all the facts. If they don’t, this amendment has no place on the ballot.

Have you read the bill that put the Poll Tax Amendment on November’s ballot? The final version sets a strict standard for identifying potential absentee voters. In fact, it’s so strict that I wonder how absentee balloting would possibly work. Here are a couple of relevant excerpts (the full text is here):

(b) All voters voting in person must present valid government-issued photographic identification before receiving a ballot….

(c) All voters, including those not voting in person, must be subject to substantially equivalent identity and eligibility verification prior to a ballot being cast or counted. [Emphasis added]

Voters not voting in person “must be subject to substantially equivalent identity and eligibility verification.” I can’t help but wonder — how in the world will that work for absentee voters? And even if it can be made to work somehow for most absentee voters, how will it work for soldiers serving oversees? At least some of them are going to lose their right to vote.

It seems to me that only way to provide “substantially equivalent identity and eligibility verification” to presenting a photo ID in person is to appear in person yourself. But voters who are voting absentee often do so because they can’t appear in person, like our military oversees. How will these voters be able to exercise their constitutional rights?

Ending absentee ballots is just one of many far-reaching consequences the Poll Tax Amendment will have on our elections. It will strip thousands of their right to vote, end same-day registration, and end absentee balloting. On top of that, it will cost millions to implement. We can’t afford this radical change that would deprive thousands of their right to vote.

SurveyUSA released a new poll today that focused heavily on the new Vikings stadium. I’m sick of talking about the Vikings, but if you’re interested, TonyAngelo has some analysis of that at MN Progressive Project.

I was struck by one of the few questions that wasn’t about the stadium. It shows that a majority of Minnesotans support equal marriage:

President Obama says that same-sex couples should be able to get married. Do you agree with the president? Or disagree?

• Agree 52%
• Disagree 42%
• Not Sure 6%

This is a big deal, in light of the anti-marriage amendment that will be on the ballot in Minnesota in 2012. A majority of registered Minnesota voters support equal marriage. Of course, we should take this result with a grain of salt, especially since the SurveyUSA poll has a pretty small sample size. On the other hand, the 10-point spread is outside the poll’s fairly large margin of sampling error, so it may very well be accurate.

What’s more, the poll may actually understate opposition to the anti-marriage amendment. It seems reasonable to me that there will be some in Minnesota who oppose equal marriage, but will also oppose the anti-marriage amendment for various reasons.  

I recognize that this poll doesn’t really square with a few other polls that have been released previously showing a slight edge in favor of the amendment. Maybe it’s the wording. Maybe it’s the sample — cell-phone respondents, for example, support marriage by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. But maybe, just maybe, it’s a sign that Minnesotans will stand up for all families in November.

The Voter ID amendment, which I’ve been referring to as the Poll Tax Amendment, has two related goals:

1. End same-day voter registration, making it harder for new voters to exercise their right to vote.
2. Make voting expensive and difficult, stripping the poor of their right to vote.

The second item above is commonly referred to as a poll tax — an illegal charge for voting aimed at taking away certain citizens’ constitutional right to vote.

I know the common retort: The IDs would be free. But the cost of the IDs themselves is just the start. Gathering the documentation required for the IDs can be expensive, time-consuming, and difficult — in some cases, even impossible, as the documentation may no longer exist.

In an Op-Ed in MinnPost, Jay and Iris Kiedrowski gave a great example of the hidden costs of obtaining an ID for Jay’s mother:

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Former Republican Governor Arne Carlson doesn’t like the MNGOP Poll Tax Amendment one bit, and he had some harsh words about the amendment. In fact, he even called it a poll tax aimed at voter suppression.

Clearly, the MNGOP isn’t fooling anyone. Even members of their own party understand that the amendment is all about stopping people from voting. Carlson also warned that once this can of worms is opened, there’s nothing to stop the parties from regularly trying to suppress each others’ voters. That would indeed be a stain on our system of free and fair elections.

You can see some excerpts of Carlson’s comments below, courtesy of The UpTake:

On Friday, I wrote that Voter ID is “an opening for bureaucratic mistakes to strip you of your constitutional rights.” I want to give you an example of the sort of mistake I’m talking about.

Years ago, when my sister-in-law was applying to college, she was told she couldn’t receive student aid because of her immigration status. That was news to her — she was born in St. Paul. Because of a data-entry error, though, that’s not what her record showed. To compound the problem, the computer system insisted that it needed her Green Card to clear things up — which, as a citizen from birth, she of course did not have.

When you’re dealing with the data of millions or even hundreds of millions of people, these sorts of mistakes are inevitable. My sister-in-law got things sorted out, and no harm was done, but it took a few weeks. But what if she hadn’t been applying for student aid, but trying to vote?

People in my sister-in-law’s place — innocent victims of simple data-entry errors — could easily be wrongfully stripped of their constitutional rights to vote. Citizenship status recorded improperly? Have a typo in your home address? Your ballot will be discarded, and you may never even find out.

If the Poll Tax Amendment passes, thousands of people may be wrongfully denied their constitutional rights because of minor clerical errors. Does the MNGOP have any sort of solution for this? Of course not — they don’t even have any enabling legislation written. This is a grotesque attack on our most fundamental rights as citizens.

Here in Minnesota, we’ve been fortunate to have a great election system, so we’ve never really had to deal with the nightmare of provisional ballots. But if the Poll Tax Amendment passes in November, we’ll all need to start learning about provisional ballots, and I guarantee you won’t like what you learn.

What is a provisional ballot? It’s a fake ballot that lets you feel like you got to vote, but which may never be counted. It’s an incomplete ballot that can be thrown away if you don’t return to the polling place a second time. It’s an opening for bureaucratic mistakes to strip you of your constitutional rights. And it’s the Republicans’ primary method for reducing the number of votes in Minnesota elections.

In the 2008 election, approximately 70 percent of provisional ballots were actually counted. At first glance, that might not sound so bad. But that means 30 percent of all provisional ballots are thrown out, and those voters are being deprived of their legal right to vote.

If the Republicans have their way, provisional balloting will be all too common in Minnesota. In fact, it may not limited to voters without ID. It may be required for same-day registration as well, forcing thousands upon thousands of same-day registrants to cast fake ballots that may never get counted. In fact, ending same-day registration is an important goal of the Poll Tax Amendment.

Can we really afford to take a chance that the Poll Tax amendment will force hundreds of thousands of us to cast provisional ballots? Voting is our most fundamental right. I for one won’t accept being given a fake ballot — I demand my right to vote.

After my post yesterday asking if Amy Klobuchar would campaign against the anti-marriage amendment, I heard from a few sources (and one commenter) correcting my statement that Klobuchar hadn’t taken a public position on the amendment. In fact, she has publicly stated her opposition to the amendment. My apologies for the error.

However, while I’m glad to hear that Senator Klobuchar has indeed come out against the hateful anti-marriage amendment, my question from yesterday still stands: How much will she do to campaign against it? To be completely clear, I don’t have any inside information saying that she won’t be active — I’m simply waiting to see, and hoping that she’ll use her enormous popularity to help defeat the amendment.

This isn’t just a yes/no question — it’s a question of how much political capital Klobuchar is willing to expend to defeat the amendment. Will she help raise money for the cause? Speak against the amendment? Make opposition to the amendment a key plank in her stump speech? Include opposition to the amendment in her get-out-the-vote literature? The more she — and all of our DFL candidates — do, the better.

DFLers should be asking this same question of all of our candidates: How much can you and will you do to defeat the anti-marriage amendment? But of all our elected officials, Klobuchar is in a particularly strong position to influence the result in November. She’s enormously popular, has a statewide presence, and doesn’t face a difficult challenger for re-election. For all these reasons, she has more power than any of our other elected officials to mobilize opposition to the amendment.

Senator Klobuchar has a lot of political capital to spend. I hope she’ll choose to use it to defeat the hateful attack on caring, committed Minnesota families.

Yesterday, Barack Obama’s campaign in Minnesota announced that Obama would oppose the state’s anti-marriage amendment. Over at MN Progressive Project, The Big E writes about why that’s big news:

It’s all about bully pulpits. From the top of the ticket, to the bottom, Democrats in Minnesota will campaigning against the marriage amendment.

That’s absolutely true. Yet I can’t help but notice one voice that has been quiet on the amendment: our very popular senior Senator, Amy Klobuchar, whose support and active campaigning against the amendment would be a big help. Klobuchar has not taken a position on the amendment, and it’s not clear whether she’ll do any campaigning on behalf of marriage equality.

UPDATE: I have heard from several sources that Klobuchar has indeed taken a public position against the amendment. I apologize for the error.

Senator Klobuchar is the most popular politician in the state. She will have a very easy re-election campaign in 2012 — she only just now got a real challenger, who will start out $5 million behind on fundraising. Her support could mean all the difference in a tight campaign. I hope she’ll do what’s right and commit to fighting the hateful anti-marriage amendment.