Mary Kiffmeyer, Grrr

There are numerous Minnesota Republicans who drive me up the wall, but I would be hard-pressed to find one who irks me at such a deep level as State Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer.


Star Tribune letter writer Sharon Tornes of Woodbury gives a good example in today's paper:

I attended the meeting of the Senate State Government Finance and Policy and Elections Committee on Feb. 18. This meeting was called exclusively for Republican Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer to introduce her bill, SF 3275, which would mandate provisional ballots for those who don’t preregister to vote. [Remember, Minnesota has same-day voter registration, which partly accounts for our high voter turnout.]

This change to our system would take additional staffing and funding to implement, and the bill allocates $4 million toward that endeavor, which counties say is not nearly enough. Plus, this allocation is only for this election year, but the law would mandate this process for every election in the future.

Those who testified could not give any data as to how many fraudulent votes this would prevent. In other words, the supporters had no idea what number of people they foresaw would actually appear at the polls and risk felony prosecutions or deportations in order to cast one vote in Minnesota. But they insisted this was mandatory to protect election security.

Now this is the same Senate committee that, last year, delayed approval of $6.6 million federal dollars that was designated by the Department of Homeland Security as essential to preventing voter fraud in this state. We were the last state in the union to allow these funds to be used. This money was sent to us by President Donald Trump and a Republican Congress to fortify against proven cyberattacks. But no, this was frivolous. In fact, Kiffmeyer was quoted in this paper as saying, “People are being hacked all the time. You’re being hacked all the time, I am. This is no big thing.”

Jaw-dropping!

Kiffmeyer, who was once our Secretary of State, sponsored the bill that put a voter ID amendment on our 2012 ballot. We defeated it at the polls that year. She has been (and may still be, I'm not sure) the state chair of American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Okay, it's easy to say this when Michele Bachmann has mostly dropped off the radar. Oh, Michele. So glad I don't have to hear about you on the news almost ever.