I am the proud sponsor of the Voter Access Protection Act (H.R. 4026), a bill to ban the use of photo identification as a requirement for voting in federal elections. I believe that this requirement disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of voters, particularly senior citizens, women, young people, minority voters and low-income individuals. Minnesota’s thirty-year history with same day voter laws proves that photo identification is not necessary to ensure secure and reliable elections.

I authored the Make Provisional Ballots Count Act (H.R. 5628). Currently there are many different procedures for how provisional ballots are collected and counted. Consequently, nearly one in three provisional ballots cast in the 2004 election were never counted. This legislation sets one federal standard for provisional ballots and establishes a specific counting process that states must follow to ensure that every legal vote is counted.