State senators walked into the chambers this morning under the watchful glare of hundreds of protesters whose mouths were covered with dollar bill stickers in protest of pending voter ID legislation. The Republican-controlled Legislature wants to place a constitutional amendment question on the 2012 ballot that would require anyone who votes to produce photo identification. Right now, eight states require photo IDs to vote, while Minnesota is one of 19 states that does not require any proof of identification to vote. "Voter ID is voter suppression!" protesters chanted, after removing their dollar gags.

Supporters of the measure say it's a common-sense precaution against voter fraud. Opponents, like the protesters assembled in the Capitol rotunda Thursday morning, say it will have the effect of disenfranchising the elderly, the disabled and student voters – people who might not have valid driver's licenses and might have trouble getting the paperwork to obtain the proper photo IDs. People like the Rev. Celester Webb's 84-year-old mother. "She's never had a copy of her birth certificate," said Webb, who has been trying to get a copy for his mother for years. But she was born at home, in rural Mississippi. He's been told that the courthouse in Grenada, Miss., burned down, possibly destroying her birth records. For a woman who grew up poor and black in the pre-Civil Rights deep south, and who's never missed an election, the idea that a constitutional amendment could take away that right is horrifying, Webb said. "It's almost like they're trying to take her back in time, to a place where she didn't have that freedom," said Webb, pastor of the United Church of God and Christ in St. Paul, who spoke at the rally. "They're trying to set her back. It absolutely hits home for me, and I'd hate to see that happen to her." But Dan McGrath, executive director of the conservative Minnesota Majority group that has spearheaded calls for voter ID, insists that disenfranchisement fears are unfounded. In 2008, he said, 6,000 apparently ineligible voters voted – most of them felons on parole, or people whose names or addresses could not be verified afterward. That, he said, is a lot of suspect votes in a year when an election was decided by a few hundred votes. "We have no evidence of disenfranchisement, but we have the evidence, we have the convictions, for vote fraud," he said.