The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Your View

November 1, 2012

Your View: Cornish's statistics don't make sense

By Thomas Osborne, Courtland

— This letter is in response to Rep. Tony Cornish’s (R, Good Thunder) letter published in the Oct. 28 Free Press. Voter fraud is unacceptable, which is why laws exist that regulate voter registration and severely punish those who commit voter fraud.

Upon examination, using Rep. Cornish’s statistics, it seems our existing voting system is working quite well. According to the Minnesota Secretary of State, there were 3,199,134 registered voters in Minnesota in 2008. Cornish says 1,099 ineligible felons voted in 2008. These votes represent 00.34 percent of the total number of voters registered in 2008, which leaves 3,198,035 (99.96 percent) votes that were apparently valid.

Will requiring photo ID’s from each voter completely eliminate voter fraud? Probably not.

Will it improve the reliability rate we already seem to have? Possibly, but at what cost? Cornish says the cost of the voter ID amendment is inexpensive.

 In 2012, there are 74,455 registered voters in Blue Earth, Nicollet, Waseca and Watonwan counties and 3,084,344 voters registered in Minnesota. According to Cornish’s statistics, it would cost approximately $1.22 per registered voter which is $91,000 for the aforementioned counties and $3,762,900 for the entire state of Minnesota. Others estimate the cost of this amendment to be in the tens of millions. That’s an awful lot of money to spend fixing a system that seems to work 99.96 percent of the time.

Wouldn’t it make sense and be cost effective to address voter registration problems with well thought out legislation? Maybe we should amend the Constitution to establish performance standards that our legislators must meet to be eligible to be re-elected? Accountability? What a concept.

 

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