The St. Cloud chapter of the League of Women Voters hosted Sherri Knuth, the Public Policy Coordinator and lobbyist for the Minnesota chapter of the League of Women Voters for a forum on Photo ID. Approximately 40 showed up, counting the volunteers. The first thing on the agenda was the "Democracy for All? The Barriers of Voter ID" video.
The video was disappointing from the standpoint that Democracy for All? is advertised as a documentary. True documentaries point to key pieces of research that verifies the statements made in the documentary. By that standard, Democracy for All? isn't a documentary.
Early in the documentary, various speakers, especially Gwen Myers, said that Photo ID is expensive, unnecessary and would "exclude some very specific groups." Late in the forum, Sherri Knuth admitted “Right now, we don’t know how many people would be affected if Photo ID was enacted.”
That matches up with something District Judge Barker said that petitioners had “not introduced evidence of a single, individual Indiana resident who will be unable to vote" as a result of Indiana's Photo ID law.
In the video, Gwen Myers' tone of voice was as filled with certainty as her statements were without documentation. Joe Mansky sang essentially the same song, saying that the "recounts in 2008 & 2010 prove our system is sound."
Actually, the only thing that a recount proves is that the election officials counted the cast ballots correctly. It doesn't prove that the person who filled in the ballot could legally vote. The only way to prove that the person filling in the ballot is voting legally is to have a Photo ID.
Initially, Ms. Knuth said that the only voter fraud that Photo ID would prevent was voter impersonation. Ms. Knuth then said that there's no proof that voter impersonation has happened in Minnesota. When asked how they'd know that voter impersonation isn't happening, Ms. Knuth hesitated before saying "I'm relying on those that administer our elections to exercise the proper oversight."
That's a fine-sounding answer but it's meaningless if "those that administer our elections" don't have the right tools to exercise proper oversight. Apparently, Ms. Knuth thinks that just trusting people is exercising proper oversight. Most Minnesotans disagree with Ms. Knuth.
Perhaps the most alarming statement of the night came when Ms. Knuth was asked how she'd change the vouching system. Ms. Knuth's reply was that she wasn't sure she'd change it.
As noted in this article, the vouching system has the potential for alot of voter fraud. Prior to the 2004 election, The Bush campaign came into the posession of this email:
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.
The initial explanation given for implementing vouching was to allow a neighbor to vouch for a new neighbor who hadn't gotten their drivers license or other form of state-issued identification.
According to that intercepted email, ACT developed a Minnesota-specific plan to commit voter fraud. It can't be verified that ACT put their plan into action so they can't be accused of voter fraud. It's more than possible to say that they'd developed a Minnesota-specific voter fraud plan.
In the end, LWV-MN's documentary isn't based on verifiable, documented facts. It's based solely on allegations, not substantiated facts. Their 'gospel' is more propaganda than fact.
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