Minnesota Lawyer
Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake, a former Minnesota secretary of state and the House author of the bill putting voter ID on the ballot, estimates that the measure will cost $4.5 million. (Staff photo: Peter Bartz-Gallagher)
It’s hard to put a price tag on an unfinished product. That’s the dilemma facing Minnesota taxpayers interested in knowing how much the voter ID amendment to the state constitution will cost before they cast their ballot on the matter this November.
Last week’s oral arguments before the Minnesota Supreme Court over the wording of the amendment highlighted the ambiguity of the amendment’s practical effects. Even supporters of voter ID acknowledge the vague wording and broad purview of the amendment — which, if passed, will require what is sure to be a contentious legislative battle over parsing and implementing what it envisions.
That uncertainty has allowed for wildly varying estimates over the ultimate cost of voter ID. Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake, a former Minnesota secretary of state and the House author of the bill putting voter ID on the ballot, estimates that the measure will cost $4.5 million. A 2011 briefing paper from Common Cause and Citizens for Election Integrity claimed the cost could be as high as $84 million. And yet both Kiffmeyer and the authors of the briefing paper based their estimates on voter ID legislation similar to that passed by the Minnesota House and Senate in 2011 and subsequently vetoed by Gov. Mark Dayton.
Partisanship clearly affects one’s perception of the bottom line. “Undeniably, people opposed [to the voter ID amendment] are going to be taking a harder look to find costs wherever they can and those in favor are more likely to overlook areas of potential cost,” says Doug Chapin, director of the Election Academy at the U of M’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
Nowhere is that partisan divide more striking than in the ongoing feud between Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and his predecessor, Kiffmeyer. Proponents of voter ID contend that Ritchie has artificially inflated the cost of electronic rosters —the latest in poll book technology — to scare Minnesotans about the potential price of implementing the amendment. “The Secretary of State’s office estimated the cost of electronic poll books at $38 million for the fiscal note on voter ID [legislation eventually vetoed by Dayton last year], but then when Ritchie came forward with his own proposal, the poll books were only $7 million,” says Dan McGrath, executive director of Minnesota Majority and chairman of Protectmyvote.com, a group advocating passage of the voter ID amendment.
Ritchie spokesperson Pat Turgeon says Ritchie cannot comment publicly on the amendment while the matter is before the state Supreme Court, but she did forward a two-page analysis of potential voter ID costs compiled by Ritchie’s office in late June. While there was no mention of the cost for electronic rosters, the analysis did highlight the potential burden on individual voters to pay for birth certificates or marriage licenses in order to secure the otherwise “free” state photo identification, and, more substantively, the set-up costs for local and state agencies to accommodate the provisional ballots that would be a part of the system under the amendment. Ritchie’s office estimated those costs at $50 million, in addition to more than $10 million in “ongoing costs for local governments.”
Joe Mansky, elections manager for Ramsey County, also believes there will be a significant cost to local governments, presenting Ramsey County officials with the prospect of a $1.75 million tab over the 2013-14 biennium for the installation of computers and software and the hiring of additional precinct poll workers required to educate voters and facilitate voting if the amendment were passed.
McGrath claims Mansky’s calculations are both inflated and fabricated from faulty reasoning. On the subject of provisional voters, for example, he notes, “In Indiana, where the voter ID law is very similar to what is in our amendment, they had less than 4,000 provisional votes [in their first statewide election under the law]. That about one provisional vote for every Minnesota precinct. So Mansky is saying he wants to hire two election judges for 14 hours that day to baby-sit one provisional voter.”
What McGrath doesn’t mention is that it cost Indiana $10 million to provide all the free IDs required under their law, far more than the $700,000 that was budgeted, and more than the $2.6 million McGrath says will be sufficient to supply free IDs to all who need them in Minnesota.
Mansky provided Ramsey County with a 19-page report heavily larded with statistics and details. McGrath is transparent on where he derives his estimate of a $7 million cost for voter ID: He uses the Minnesota Driver and Vehicle Services estimate of 144,000 voting-age residents without photo identification and then multiplying that by $18 to get his $2.6 million cost of supplying free identification. Poll book software and laptops for precincts would comprise another $2.5 to $3 million, with the rest taken up by voter education.
But the truth is that nobody knows. Assuming voter ID passes, nobody knows whether the Republicans will retain control over both the Minnesota House and Senate, or what sorts of implementation provisions would have to be negotiated to win Dayton’s signature on a voter ID package.
Nor is the experience of other states necessarily helpful. The National Council of State Legislatures recently compiled fiscal notes from voter ID bills from 11 different states on their website, and the estimated cost ranged from “no fiscal impact” in Nebraska to $16.9 million in Missouri. (The fiscal notes from Minnesota Management and Budget on the voter ID bill ultimately vetoed by Dayton in 2011 ranged from $4.5 million to more than $58 million at various stages in the process.)
According to Wendy Underhill of the NCSL, the discrepancy arises from a number of factors:
• Differences in state voting laws.
• The factors that particular states choose to identify or ignore in terms of potential cost.
• The absence of any longstanding precedents, given the relative newness of voter ID laws.
Finally, nobody knows where or when the next hurdle or roadblock may present itself. Voter ID opponents have cited the personal cost of obtaining a birth certificate or marriage license as an unfunded mandate on individuals in the amendment. Kiffmeyer claims that waivers can be granted for $10 if a senior citizen can produce “a family Bible or a newspaper clipping or something that shows who she is.” McGrath agrees, saying, “As long as you can verify your story, you can get an ID” without those official documents, although he adds, “At some point there also has to be some personal responsibility. I mean, it’s cold in November and you usually have to wear a coat when you go and vote. Will the cost of a coat be considered a poll tax?”
But McGrath’s sarcasm may be closer to reality than he believes. David Schultz, an election law professor at Hamline University and the co-author of an upcoming study on voter ID in Minnesota, warns that individual costs could be a sticking point.
“In 1966, the Supreme Court struck down a $1.50 poll tax in Virginia under due process and the equal protection clause because they stated it created an undue burden on the right to vote. I don’t know what $1.50 would be inflation-wise in today’s dollars. And then in 2006, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down its photo ID law because it burdened people’s right to vote. The court noted that individuals had to pay $20 for a birth certificate, but they also talked about the cost of navigating the bureaucracy and jumping through hoops. They pointed out that individuals still had to pay money to get their ‘free’ ID,” Schultz says. “That was a legislative law and not a constitutional amendment, but it still might be relevant to Minnesota voter ID.”
Does anyone have court challenges as a line item in the eventual cost of the amendment?
