A proposed state constitutional amendment to require voter I.D. at the polling booths will be costly to implement, and especially burdensome for large cities that are already raising property taxes to meet budget. That’s the word from mayors or city councils in St. Paul, Minneapolis, St. Louis Park, Golden Valley, Crystal and Rochester, Minn., as well as the manager of elections in Ramsey County.
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak joined St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Ramsey County Elections Manager Joe Mansky on Monday, Aug. 20, for a State House press conference calling the voter I.D. amendment an “unfunded mandate” and a costly solution in search of a virtually non-existent problem. They also said the amendment will end same-day voter registration, a hallmark of the Minnesota voting system.
The press conference was filmed by the Uptake.org’s Jacob Wheeler. The video accompanies an article by Michael McIntee, which sums up the highlights here: theUptake.org.
Of course, the folks over at ProtectMyVote.com think many of those concerns are a lot of hooey, and they say so, here: http://www.protectmyvote.com/.
On the website, the pro-voter I.D. folks say the state will issue free voter I.D. cards, which won’t cost cities a penny, and “although some have suggested that each precinct will need to hire two additional election judges to deal with the newly enacted provisional ballot system, the suggestion is positively ludicrous.”
They do acknowledge, however, that the state (not cities or counties) will bear anywhere from $10 to $40 million or more in new costs:
“Researchers in the legislature estimated the Voter ID amendment will cost the state of Minnesota between $10 and $12 million initially and $2-3 million per election cycle thereafter (about 66 cents for each Minnesota taxpayer, per year for the first 4 years)…
…Depending on the final enacting legislation, there could be additional start-up costs, such as the purchase of electronic pollbook computers and software. The cost to the state could be as much as $40 million, which may seem like a lot, but compared to the tremendous amount we already spend on elections, or the cost of 7 miles of light rail track ($1 billion), implementing Voter ID is still a bargain.”