Across the country, legislators (mostly Republicans) are pushing for so-called “voter ID” laws that would require every voter to present a photo ID before casting his or her vote. This requirement is ostensibly meant to reduce voting fraud. In fact, it would do no such thing.

Nearly all reports of voter fraud turn out to be clerical errors. For example, lawyers for both candidates in the 2008 presidential election looked for examples of voter fraud, but were not able to find any. The only fraud that a photo ID requirement might prevent would be voter impersonation—a non-eligible voter impersonating an eligible voter at the polls. This has apparently never happened. Why would it? It is hard to do, and the payoff is practically non-existent. In 2009, Adam Skaggs of the Brennan Center testified to the Texas legislature that there are “virtually no confirmed examples of impersonation fraud.”

That’s enough of a reason not to increase the cost of holding elections, but the effect of an ID requirement is important to consider.

According to the Minnesota League of Women Voters, a substantial proportion of the electorate does not have a government-issued photo ID:

• 18% of elderly citizens
• 15% of voters earning less than $35,000 a year
• 18% of citizens aged 18-24 do not have a government-issued ID with their current name and address
• 10% of voters with disabilities
• 25% of African-American citizens of voting age

In other words, a lot of poor people, college students, minorities, and people who rely on public benefits. Some of these people would have a hard time getting a photo ID because they don’t have access to their birth certificate or other identifying information. They also tend to support Democrats. Maybe voter ID requirements really aren’t about voter fraud after all (especially since the specter of voter fraud is itself a fraud), but about disenfranchising broad swathes of likely Democratic voters? Seems suspiciously likely.

Voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem. Oppose them at the polls, and tell your representatives you oppose efforts to make it harder to vote.

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cle0patra/3040705918/)

Voter ID Won’t Prevent Fraud, but Will Prevent Votes is a post from Caveat Emptor

Related posts:

• Mortgage fraud, another Enron?


• Commentary: How to prevent the next Wall Street crisis


• Fraud Alerts Will Not Hurt Your Credit Score

I’ve been following the progress of several Minnesota “tort reform” measures. I put that in quotation marks because most of the bills in question don’t just reform the law of tort; they also eviscerate a raft of consumer laws, robbing consumers of important protections. These are laws designed to prevent fraud, harassment, and abuse. If enforced, these laws could help prevent another economic meltdown. These bills could hasten the next recession by shielding defendants from the law and encouraging the sort of behavior that led to the last one.

SF 149 makes class certification decisions immediately appealable. This will add years to the initial phase of class action lawsuits, inflating costs, delaying justice, and making it more difficult to track down members of the class if it is ultimately certified. In particular, it gives corporate defendants a strong tool for delaying proceedings, which will discourage class action lawyers from taking lawsuits.

While I have complained about class action lawyers in the past, this bill will do nothing to answer my complaints. Instead, it will make the situation worse by encouraging even smaller settlements for consumers.

This bill would also raise the conciliation court threshold to $10,000. I’m neutral on this. I don’t think it’s a great idea, but it’s not a terrible one, either.

SF 429 essentially requires courts to make attorney fee awards “proportional” to any damages awarded. I’ve already talked about why this is a dumb idea in this post and this one. The bottom line: the whole point of adding attorney fee provisions to consumer protection laws is that the damages awarded are often small, so that attorneys cannot take the case if they won’t be compensated. In other words, attorney fees are almost always unproportional to the damages awarded. If that weren’t the case, these laws won’t be enforced.

SF 373 reduces the general Minnesota statute of limitations from six to four years. I’m actually okay with this one, since debt buyers have long taken advantage of Minnesota’s long statute of limitations to rack up obscene amounts of interest.

The next stop for these bills is Governor Dayton’s desk. I’m hopeful he will veto the first two.

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinytall/5068714787/)

Minnesota Legislature Passes Several “Tort Reform” Measures is a post from Caveat Emptor

Related posts:

• Minnesota legislature passes Subprime Borrower Relief Act


• Minnesota State Senator Linda Scheid v. Consumers


• The Benefits (?) of Tort Reform

Tomorrow, the Minnesota House of Representatives will consider two “tort reform” bills that would eviscerate Minnesota’s consumer protection statutes and set up road blocks to discourage class actions. The first bill is former Senator Linda Scheid’s stupid, anti-consumer bill, sponsored in the House by representatives Pat Mazorol (R), Denise Dittrich (D), Bev Scalze (D), Keith Downey (R), and Sandra Peterson (D). The bill will effectively remove attorney fees from consumer protection statutes—i.e., the main reason why consumer lawyers are able to take such cases in the first place.

The second grants defendants an interlocutory appeal from any class certification decision. This would add approximately two years to every class action, giving defendants a powerful new way to delay the proceedings and lose more paperwork.

If you are in Minnesota, please call your representative and ask him or her to oppose these bills.

Minnesota Considers Reforming Away Consumers’ Rights is a post from Caveat Emptor

Related posts:

• Minnesota State Senator Linda Scheid v. Consumers


• Minnesota Lawyer on anti-consumer attorney fee legislation


• House passes the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights

In order to administer any kind of justice, our court system requires two parties participating in a lawsuit. When that doesn’t happen, plaintiffs generally prevail, even if they haven’t produced any proof of their claims. Ordinarily, a default is a bad thing for a plaintiff, because there is little or no chance of getting paid.

Defaults are just what debt buyers want, though, because they have thousands of lawsuits to file and little or no proof in any of them. And debt buyers are willing and able to pursue collections on a massive scale—garnishing salaries and bank accounts to satisfy all those default judgments. Essentially, the debt buyer industry has found a loophole in the court system—a way to exploit the default rules.

That’s why courts need to raise the bar for debt buyers. When the usual result of a debt buyer lawsuit is a deprivation of property, courts should endeavor to make sure it doesn’t happen unless the debt buyer has shown some right to that property.

The Maryland Court of Appeals recently decided just that. Since last week, debt buyers must show actual proof that the defendant owes the debt and that the debt buyer has actually purchased the debt. The court also made it clear that it does not trust the robo-signed affidavits that debt buyers routinely attach to their lawsuits.

It’s a step in the right direction, and I hope more states will follow suit.

Courts Should Require Extra Proof From Debt Buyers is a post from Caveat Emptor

Related posts:

• Evidence of Assignment: Why Debt Buyers Have Proof Problems


• Maryland Default Judgment Rules Tightened for Debt Buyers


• Robo-Signers at Debt Buyer Firms Overwhelm Courts

The movie industry is “not comfortable” with the whole internet thing, just like it wasn’t comfortable with DVRs, VCRs, video rentals, cable TV, and pretty much any other innovation since moving pictures were invented in 1895.

So it might be surprised to learn that the Swiss government determined that illegal downloading and filesharing actually increases the profits of the entertainment sector. That’s because pirates also tend to be really interested in movies, music, video games, etc., and spend a lot of money on their hobby. In other words, when the movie industry goes after pirates, it punishes its best sources of revenue.

Not an organization to learn before it lobbies, the MPAA is fighting like hell against something it doesn’t understand and that probably does more good than harm.

(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/56879526@N03/5769013110/)

Piracy Leads to Profits—for Content Producers is a post from Caveat Emptor

Related posts:

• Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar Wants to Put Justin Bieber in Jail


• Profits of a payday lender


• SOPA and PIPA May Break the Internet, Hurt Consumers, and Chill Free Speech Online