Disclaimer: These are my opinions only. If you disagree, that's fine. I suggest you start a a thread about why you should vote yes.

With just days before the election and two constitutional amendments in a virtual dead heat, it is time to convince the undecided and change the minds of the rest. If you will be voting no and want to convince your more conservative friends and relatives to vote no, here's what I think you should say.

1. The marriage amendment is a hot, hot issue. If someone is anti-gay I still believe they can be convinced to vote no. The argument that people should be able to love who they want or be who they want is lost on people who believe, in their hearts, that being gay is wrong. Well, this amendment is not about being gay or allowing gay marriage. Gay marriage is against the law now and it will be against the law if the amendment fails and no one is about to pass a gay marriage law. The fact is that the best constitutional amendments are the ones that preserve and ensure rights, not to take them away. Look at the first 10 amendments to the US constitution. They guarantee freedom of speech and religion, protection against unlawful search and seizure, the right to bear arms, the right of trial by jury, etc. This amendment seeks to take rights away. If we start using the constitution to take rights away, whose rights will be next? And what's the only amendment that anyone can remember being repealed? The one that took away the right to drink. This amendment is not a good idea.

2. The voter ID amendment is not about voter fraud at all. It is nothing short of more government. The Republicans talk all about how they want less government so why are they proposing an amendment that makes more demands on the people? Minnesota is the national standard for clean elections and these guys want to add more government. It's going to cost us money and keep people from exercising their legitimate right to vote.

Totally agree with you. I personally believe that we should change our laws to make all legal joinings between two people civil unions thus making a "marriage" only relevant to being joined in a church setting. Don't think two people of the same sex should be joined because of your religion? Great! Don't let it happen in your church.

And to the voting thing. Has there every been any proof at all that there is fraud going on outside of one or two people that are felons trying to vote because they didn't realize they lost their right to vote?

I've only heard of one conclusive case in Minnesota, where a woman filled out her daughter's absentee ballot as per her daughter's instructions, thinking that her daughter could not vote in person. The daughter did vote in person where she was attending school.
Group claims $1,000 ACLU prize for finding voting fraud - Star Tribune

However, this article points out that fraud is incredibly rare, and that a voter ID law would not stop fraud with regard to absentee ballots.
Cases of Voter ID Election Fraud Found 'Virtually Non-Existent' - MinnPost

The German in me wants to demand ID from everyone for everything, but this doesn't seem to do anything useful. Maybe if we could make people show their Papiere as soon as they leave ihre houses we'd be im ein besser Amerika.

I will be voting no on both amendments. Most recent polls have both amendments failing, I'm happy to report.

Yikes. No.

Thanks for that. I've been afraid to look.

The "vote no" on the marriage amendment folks are on the defensive. I wonder if it would have been better to build an argument promoting equitable marriage so the vote NO would be the first step in removing the prohibition against (certain) marriage.

Voting NO and NO.

I have no idea about political strategy; I am an alien and find human politics baffling. Project 515 seems like a good organization.

Keep hate out of our constitution.

Vote No and No!

Phew!

It was a good night!

No kidding. I was pretty sure one of those was going to pass based on the so-called people in the know.

Frankly I am a bit disturbed by this new tactic of trying to make everything a constitutional amendment. In Florida there were something like 8 of them and the ballots were 4+ pages long. We're a Republic. We elect people to govern for us. Not everything your governor refuses to sign needs to become a state-wide referendum. If I were going to change the constitution it would be to increase the difficulty of getting a constitutional amendment on the ballot and make it require 2/3 majority to pass.

We are in this weird dark time right now where people say one thing and mean another and almost no one within politics has clean hands. Even people with the purist intentions end up being corporate whores for the man. It is sad.

The goal is to doctor these amendments up as much as possible so people don't know about them until they appear on the ballot and once it is passed that is it, good luck undoing it. They are like rapists, if you open the door enough for them to get their foot in there, good luck to your butt.

Plus Reverborama I agree with your original statement. Republican party runs on the platform of democracy and government keeping their paws off your rights, yet they are continually trying to take rights away from those who they don't like. I view them in the same light as the Westboro Baptist Church. Religious fanaticism is dangerous no matter how loud the vehicle it is expressed.

Happy to say that I was proud to be a Minnesotan today after checking results early morning!