by Steve Timmer

Nov 1, 2012, 9:00 AM

Dan McGrath’s rotten Dagwood sandwich

On Monday, the Strib ran an article on A1, with this photo, above the fold. Dan’s Dagwood sandwich represents, according to Dan, all the cases of felon voting fraud that his organization unearthed since 2008. The article, and the photo’s caption too, did state the proposed amendment wouldn’t deal with that problem. But I thought the prominence of the photo and its content was a misleading choice by the photo editor.

It prompted me to write a letter to the editor at the Strib which, of course, it didn’t publish. Here it is:

There was an arresting photo of Dan McGrath with his Dagwood sandwich of felon voting cases that ran with Jim Ragsdale’s article on photo voter ID on A1 above the fold [Monday, October 29th]. More accurate, though, would have been a photo with McGrath seated at an empty table, representing all the cases of voter impersonation, dead people voting, and alien voting that McGrath’s organization has unearthed.

 In 2009, the Minnesota Legislature enacted on a bi-partisan basis a bill to inform felons when they are “off paper” and their civil rights were restored, so that they could know when it was lawful for them to again register and vote. The bill addressed the only kind of “voter fraud” that exists in Minnesota. The bill was opposed by Mary Kiffmeyer, then a House member; it was vetoed by then-governor Tim Pawlenty.

The veto was also urged by McGrath and his organization in one of the coldest and most craven acts of political calculation in memory. The same might be said of Kiffmeyer, the author of the partisan amendment to disenfranchise thousands.

McGrath and Kiffmeyer, and our former governor, too, deliberately rebuffed a solution to the only voter fraud problem that exists to try to exploit the issue for partisan advantage in this cycle. Just like the marriage amendment.