Letter to the Editor: Voter suppression

Dear Editor:

I read the letter on how to fix elections that was printed December 4. Here’s my reaction. I guess the writer wants to go back to extreme voter suppression and disenfranchisement of voters.

Voter ID required in all states. This discriminates against minorities, college students, low-income, and the elderly. Additionally, in 2014, a Loyola Law School analysis looking at voter impersonations, found that there were only 31 cases since 2000, out of more than one billion votes cast in the entire country.

The writer’s suggestion that mail-in ballots can only be utilized by the elderly, disabled, and out-of-towners disenfranchises all voters from Washington, Oregon, and Colorado who have been voting by mail for some time. Hawaii approved voting by mail in 2019 for the 2020 elections. And in California as you know, all voters received a ballot because of the coronavirus. I know my husband and I appreciated being able to vote this way without having to go into the polls. Frankly, I think all states should allow mail-in ballots without an excuse. Period.

Since we have no control over the Post Office as to when a ballot is received, as long as it is postmarked by election day, it should be accepted within the state’s time limits.  And, when you have a current federal administration messing with the postal service prior to the election to slow down the entire process, then there needs to be some leeway.  And what about overseas military ballots, ballots from civilians who work overseas, and provisional ballots?

With over 161 million ballots cast in this last election it would be absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to count all ballots on election day!  In California alone, there were approximately 17,330,000 votes cast.  Do you really think that all of those votes could be counted in one day only? And with the suggestion of not using machines to count the ballots, again there is no way that all of those votes could be counted in one day without using the machines. Get real!

Parties, candidates, citizen groups, or independent organizations can deploy observers to witness the electoral process. State policies do vary, but I am not aware of anywhere there was an issue.  There were some restrictions this year because of COVID-19.

According to former U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs, “This was the most secure election in American history. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes or changed votes or was in any way compromised.”  Krebs, a lifelong Republican was put in charge of this agency two years ago.  He also worked on cybersecurity in the Bush Administration.  I would like to know what failures the writer is referring to as I can’t find any major issues.

And, just to let you know, in the past 40 years, seven presidential elections have gone beyond election day.  What you see on election day is the media using projections that are strong enough to announce one candidate over the other. But these calls are not the official results. 

We did have a fair election without suspicion of fraud.  “Voting is the expression of our commitment to ourselves, one another, our country, and this world.” – Sharon Salzberg

Verletta Moeller
Norwalk