LETTER: An effort to suppress voting

I read with interest your editorial on forcing Senate Democrats to go on record opposing voter ID requirements. The poll you cite does reflect decreased confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections. However, the evidence suggests this isn’t because of fraud. Rather, it reflects widespread disinformation spread by President Donald Trump, his administration and his followers.

For U.S. citizens 18 or older, voting is a right, not a privilege. We need to defend that right, not deny it to those less well-off who can’t afford a passport or to the 20 million Americans who don’t have access to their birth certificates.

Numerous studies demonstrate that voting fraud in the United States is exceedingly rare. The Heritage Foundation has searched earnestly for fraud in multiple elections in multiple states. In Arizona, looking at 36 elections with more than 42 million votes cast, it found 36 examples of fraud. In Nevada, scrutinizing 14 elections over 13 years, involving 8.5 million votes, it found eight possible cases.

The Trump administration’s efforts to require presentation of a birth certificate or passport for voter registration are not about fairness or ending the vanishingly small risk of election fraud. They are, rather, an attempt to suppress voting by citizens who might not support the Administration or its agenda.

Sen. Chuck Schumer and others have used extreme metaphors on this issue. Nonetheless, the rights of Americans — even low-income or otherwise disadvantaged Americans — to vote should not be infringed. That is the main issue here, not political liabilities.

Congress, one hopes, can move beyond attempting to trap opponents into embarrassing votes, or attempting to suppress voters with whom they disagree, and instead get back to running the country effectively and protecting the right of all American citizens to vote.