Vote No on Minnesota's Poll Tax

MinnPost yesterday had a great post about our upcoming referendum on requiring voters to show ID. The writers,  Jay and Iris Kiedrowski, describe the situation of one particular voter, an elderly woman (Jay's mother). Like an estimated 200,000 older voters in the state, she doesn't have a driver's license or a state photo ID. To get one, she had to get both her birth certificate and her marriage license, which required a lot of paper- and legwork.

The amendment requires the state to cover the cost of the ID itself, but not the documents needed to get the ID, which, as several commenters point out, constitutes a poll tax. And a higher tax on women than men, generally, because of the need for the marriage license to document name changes.

And even the idea that the state will pay for the IDs is dubious. As one commenter put it, "Everyone who trusts the Republicans to set up an adequately financed and efficiently run government program raise your hand."

The one good thing about this and our other referenda is that it's easy to know how to vote: Just write NO on everything.