Adventures in absentee voting!

Normally I enjoy casting my vote at the local polling station.  Minnesota gets good voter turnout in general elections, even in midterm cycles, and it’s fun to see people crowding into the local municipal building in which my precinct votes.  It gives Election Day even more of a sense of an event, and despite the eventual results, the sight bolsters confidence in self-government.

This year, however, I may be traveling on Election Day, so the First Mate and I applied for absentee ballots for the first time since moving to Minnesota.  When we got the application, and again when we got the absentee ballot forms, I noticed that the state requests either the last four digits of the applicant’s SSN or their Minnesota driver’s license/ID number to identify the applicant.  Here is a screen shot of application in PDF form (downloadable from the Secretary of State’s website):

The absentee ballot comes in three parts: the ballot itself, identical to what is provided at the polling station, an orange security envelope with no identifying marks at all, and a mailing envelope that contains the identification of the voter.  I scanned the relevant portion of the outer envelope:

Yes, I was going for that classic Batman 20-degree tilt.  Well, not really, but I didn’t feel like re-scanning it.  Sue me.

Clearly, the intent is to use the ID numbers as a set of matchable data to ensure the integrity of the absentee ballot.  I have no issue with that, actually; it looks like a good system.  The website even allows voters to check on the status of their ballots by using the ID data entered on the application and the outer envelope.  There also appears to be a provisional method of checking eligibility and integrity without having an ID number, which I didn’t pursue since both the FM and I have state-issued IDs, and which is not explained on the SoS website, either.

However, here’s the problem.  Minnesota has what’s called a “vouching” law, in which anyone can get a ballot simply by having another registered voter “vouch” that they are eligible.  Every eligible voter can vouch for 15 other people in each election.  That means each eligible voter can conceivably get 15 people into the voting booth without any ID at all, or any indication that the voter is eligible or is the same person who is registered on the rolls.

If we can ask for ID numbers on absentee ballots, why can’t we do the same for polling stations?  Why do we have such ridiculous vouching laws when the voters have the responsibility to properly identify themselves?  If we can go to the extent that we use for absentee balloting, which is hardly burdensome, we can do better at the polling stations, too.

And it matters.  In order for people to have confidence in electoral systems, they have to have integrity.  People have to know that their votes count and aren’t being diluted by voter fraud, and the easiest method for preventing fraud is to have election judges check ID, or have much more scrutiny on the exceptions than the “vouching” system employed at the moment.  Minnesota has integrity built into the absentee system; why not the actual polling stations as well?

Chris Barden, Dan Severson, and Tom Emmer have all campaigned for photo-ID requirements for voting in Minnesota.