Anyone Who Knows Me Knows I Will Be Voting NO

Anyone who knows me knows I will be voting NOvember 6. I am open and eager to dialogue with my friends, family and peers about the constitutional amendments. And I want to share with you why I am choosing to vote NO, especially if you are still on the fence:

Let’s start with the marriage amendment. I am part of the LGBTQ community. I plan on marrying my partner some day and our marriage should be of equal value to anyone else. People say that we can go get married in a state that allows same-sex marriages such as Iowa. This is true; we can go to Iowa to get married. But to receive the benefits that heterosexual married couples get, we would have to live in Iowa. It is very tricky and considered a grey area when trying to receive those rights where the state you live in doesn’t recognize it. And I love Minnesota. Even though I wasn’t born in Minnesota, I definitely know what 'Minnesota Nice' is and this amendment isn’t it. Marriage is about love and making the biggest commitment to that one person that you want to spend the rest of your life with. That is how I feel about my partner. Love is love and there shouldn’t be a definition for it in our state constitution.

As for the voter ID amendment, like I said I wasn’t born here and I currently have a South Dakota license. When students go away to college, most keep their same “home address” on everything. As a student I have moved in and out of apartments, dorms, houses and not once did I get a new license with my current address on it. Because I go to school full time in Minnesota I am allowed to vote in this state. But if this amendment were to pass I could not vote on Election Day. I would not be able to present a valid government issued photo ID with my current address on it. This amendment would definitely be harmful to me and all the other students out there that don’t have their current address on their ID. They say that the amendment will help prevent voter fraud. No it won’t, it’s to prevent voter impersonation. And how many voter impersonators has Minnesota had? ZERO. It’s trying to provide a solution to a problem that we don’t have. So let’s make this issue go away and vote NO.

What am I doing to make sure these amendments don’t pass?

I am a proud task force leader for MPIRG at the University of Minnesota Duluth. And we have hit the ground running with our Vote NOvember campaign. Each week we have been tabling and registering people to vote. Also we have our lovely lime green pledge cards. We are asking people to pledge to vote NO with us. Our pledge cards are actually post cards. We ask for peoples' addresses so we can mail the cards back to them with their polling place information as a reminder before Election Day. How cool is that? I’m just proud to be working with all these dedicated MPIRGers to defeat these amendments.

Join us and pledge to vote NOvember 6!

Alexa McIndoe, UM-Duluth MPIRG Gender Justice Task Force Leader

Pictured: UMD MPIRG data entry house party