Feb 26 Seifert: Let's Halfheartedly Do What's Right

DISCLAIMER: I'm part of Tom Emmer's steering committee.

According to this Strib post, Tom Emmer and Marty Seifert offered amendments to the legislation that would move Minnesota's primary from September to August. Had it passed, Tom's amendment would've required voters to present a photo ID before voting. Unfortunately, too many DFL legislators stayed loyal to the DFL leadership to vote for a reform that upwards of 75 percent of Minnesotans agree with.

Larry Haws and Larry Hosch, who represent HD-15B and HD-14B respectively, voted against the photo ID amendment.

Marty Seifert's amendment would've reduced the number of people a legally registerd voter could vouch for from 15 to 3. My question for Rep. Seifert is simple: Why didn't your amendment eliminate vouching altogether? If you think it's important to offer an amendment limiting vouching, you obviously must think that there's something wrong with vouching. If something in our electoral system needs fixing, shouldn't we fix it rather than just tinker around the edges?

I remember this Powerline post from the 2004 election cycle:

Among the well-funded and supposedly independent groups supporting John Kerry in the campaign is Americans Coming Together (ACT). ACT has taken notice of Minnesota's special vulnerabilty to vote fraud and organized a sophisticated effort to exploit it in a manner that violates Minnesota law. In Minnesota the Bush campaign has come into the possession of the following email from ACT to its Minnesota volunteers:

Election Day is upon us. You are confirmed to volunteer with ACT (America Coming Together - http://www.actforvictory.org/) on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov 2.

We will be creating name badges that include your Ward and Precinct information for each of the thousands of volunteers that day to make it easier to find a volunteer to vouch for a voter at the polls.

I am emailing you to request your street address, city and zipcode. We've already got your other contact information, but your record in our database does not include this information.

You can save us time on election day by replying today to this email with this information, or give us a call at [phone number with St. Paul area code].

In order to get your badge correct, please reply by Thursday.

Thank you for your help and cooperation. See you on Election Day!
This email is a smoking gun of massive premeditated vote fraud. The ACT effort contemplates the prepositioning of registered voters as volunteers at their precincts of residence to provide the "vouching" necessary to get individuals registered to vote on election day in the precinct whether or not the volunteer "personally knows" the residence of the unregistered voter. It is a recipe for illegal voting in every precinct of the state.

Clearly, the opportunity for voter fraud exists within a vouching system. There's no reason to trust someone vouching for someone who doesn't have the proper paperwork. As Powerline's post shows, liberal special interest groups have figured out how to game the system.

With that in mind, shouldn't Mr. Seifert's amendment eliminated vouching, not just cut down on it? I'll admit that it was likely that the DFL was going to defeat the amendment. That's all the more the reason to draft it right. Doing something half way gives the DFL the excuse that they didn't vote for it because it didn't fix the problem. Had Rep. Seifert offered an amendment that would've eliminated vouching, the DFL would've been forced to defend a system that can be gamed.

Comments welcome at LFR.