In a shocking upset, the voter ID amendment has failed, and by a sizable margin. With 98 percent of precincts reporting, the "no" votes led by nearly 8 percentage points, MPR says. The measure would have amended the state constitution to require voters to bring photo IDs to the polls.

Planned Parenthood has thrown its weight behind efforts to defeat the ballot measures that seek to ban gay marriage and require voters to bring photo ID to polling places. The two measures are important to the people Planned Parenthood works with, MPR reports.

The Minnesota Supreme Court is going to have a busy day July 31. The court Friday scheduled a case that seeks to undo Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's chosen title for the photo ID constitutional amendment the Legislature put on the November ballot. The other, previously scheduled, is for arguments over a nearly identical protest over Ritchie's title for the amendment to ban same sex marriage.

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie is changing the title of the constitutional amendment to “Changes to in-person & absentee voting & voter registration; provisional ballots." Sponsors of the measure, seeking to require voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot, want the question titled "Photo Identification Required for Voting." Ritchie is being sued for changing the title on the marriage amendment question.

A group opposed to the Voter ID Constitutional amendment Minnesotans will vote on in November estimates changes required by the amendment would cost state and local governments at least $33 million and possibly twice that amount. The Center For Election Integrity Minnesota says individual Minnesotans could spend a similar amount assembling the documents needed to qualify for state-issued IDs.

The lawsuit by groups trying to block a proposed constitutional amendment requiring voters to show photo ID is running into opposition from the state's Republican leaders. Senate Majority Leader David Senjem said he and his GOP colleagues "intend to protect the right of citizens to vote on this important issue of election integrity."

Our Vote Our Future, a coalition of groups that opposes the proposed photo ID constitutional amendment, has begun running a 30-second TV spot featuring Democrat Joan Growe, who was Minnesota's Secretary of State from 1975 to 1999, the Star Tribune reports.

The measure advanced through a House committee on a party-line vote Monday. If the House and Senate pass the proposal, then voters in the November election will decide whether to amend the state constitution to require that all would-be voters present a photo ID before they cast a ballot.