Gary Gross
Minneapolis Conservative Examiner
January 9, 2012

This article is about exposing the connection between a campaign against Photo ID, a smoking gun in Minnesota, attempted voter fraud and a corrupt organization.
The trail starts with two supposedly good government watchdog organizations, the LWV-MN and Common Cause MN that sing from the same voting rights hymnal.

First, here's what Common Cause MN says about voting:
Our broad goals for overhauling the nation’s system of voting include:


  • Access: Increase access to voting by removing existing barriers, changing registration and voting practices, and ensuring voting rights for all Americans.
  • Accuracy: Safeguard our voting systems by passing federal and state legislation to enhance voting machine accuracy and security.
  • Accountability: Hold election officials accountable by passing legislation prohibiting partisan activity and establishing strict conflict of interest laws
Common Cause MN's initiatives are entirely unacceptable. Voting machine accuracy is fine but the machine doesn't know if the person voting is a legal, registered voter. Voting machines can't tell if the voter is a convicted felon whose voting rights haven't been restored. Therefore, that initiative is ineffective in combating voter fraud.

Passing "strict conflict of interest laws" sounds impressive but what does that mean in terms of guaranteeing election integrity? Is Common Cause MN accusing election officials of swinging elections through partisan activities? If they aren't, why should citizens think that this provision is anything more than window dressing?

Most worrisome, though, is their first initiative of increasing "access to voting by removing existing barriers, changing registration and voting practices, and ensuring voting rights for all Americans." If Common Cause MN thinks that "increasing access to voting" by removing important safeguards against voter fraud is a positive step forward, then they're complicit anytime voter fraud is caught and prosecuted.

It's naive to say that "all Americans" have the right to vote. Felons still on probation don't have the right to vote in Minnesota. Illegal immigrants don't have the right to vote. How would a voting machine detect who's an illegal immigrant or a felon?

Next, it's important to connect these 'good government watchdog organizations' to the campaign against Photo ID. The LWV-MN website cites this report by Justin Leavitt of the Brennan Center for Justice as proof that Photo ID isn't needed. Before jumping into the meat of the subject, here's what the Brennan Center for Justice website said about Mr. Leavitt:
Justin Levitt is counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, working on election administration, redistricting, and other voting rights concerns. Before he joined the Center, Mr. Levitt served as in-house counsel to America Coming Together, the largest voter mobilization campaign in history, and as Director of Strategic Targeting for a national presidential campaign. He is the author of Making the List: Database Matching and Verification Processes for Voter Registration (Brennan Center 2006), and a number of other scholarly and popular publications on election law.

That's an important piece of information. When you read Scott Johnson's post on Powerline titled A Gun Smokes In Minnesota, the connection will become clear. Here's the key portion of Scott Johnson's post:

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.
In other words, the study that the LWV-MN is citing as proof why we don't need Photo ID was written by the in-house counsel of a corrupt organization that put together a plan to commit voter fraud that Photo ID would've stopped dead in its tracks.

Obviously, the information in Scott Johnson's post identifies ACT as a corrupt organization. Additionally, it ties together the need for Photo ID because it proves that voter fraud a) is systemic, b)was sponsored by a corrupt organization and c) was planned with great specificity for a specific state's voting laws.

The thought that an organization could be that well-funded, that corrupt and that well-versed in states' election laws means that this isn't just a Minnesota problem. Though voter fraud schemes in other states undoubtedly take other forms, there's little doubt but that it's a systemic problem.

The good news is that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Photo ID laws are constitutional. In the case of Crawford v. Marion County Board of Elections, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Photo ID's are constitutional:

The State has identified several state interests that arguably justify the burdens that SEA 483 imposes on voters and potential voters. While petitioners argue that the statute was actually motivated by partisan concerns and dispute both the significance of the State’s interests and the magnitude of any real threat to those interests, they do not question the legitimacy of the interests the State has identified. Each is unquestionably relevant to the State’s interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.
In other words, 'good government organizations' like the League of Women Voters and Common Cause are fighting a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court. Why would two supposedly good government watchdog organizations fight against election integrity?
While we don't have the answer to that question, we know that a) voter fraud exists, b) Photo ID is constitutional and c) corrupt organizations have put together elaborate plans to commit voter fraud.

It isn't difficult to understand why Photo ID polls so well in every demographic group:

Governor Mark Dayton vetoed the voter ID bill saying it lacked “broad legislative bipartisan” support.

According to our exclusive new SurveyUSA poll, 76% of Minnesotans say they’d vote in favor of voter ID. Only 18% oppose the idea.
It isn't surprising that Gov. Dayton vetoed the Photo ID bill. It's a matter of religious faith with Democrats that Photo ID is evil and must be defeated at any cost.

Thanks to the League of Women Voters' website, we now know that there's a connection between the opponents of Photo ID, voter fraud and some corrupt organizations.