I wrote a letter responding to the article written by Jim Hurst about why we should vote on election day rather than earlier or by mail. Part of the discussion was about whether people who vote other than on election day are too lazy to get up and vote. I indicated that maybe there were plenty of legitimate reasons to vote other than on election day and that easy rules for voting were assurance for our democracy.
Many of the restrictions on voting eligibility were aimed at blacks, pure and simple. The Republican Party has been the principal supporter of restrictive voting laws because of its need to suppress the vote to ensure election.
Just read the reaction of Republican state legislators about imposing severe restrictions on mail-in voting for the future. Given the results of the 2020 election for those same legislators, I would be careful of change to more restrictive voting rules. And aren’t those rules really designed to suppress the vote?
Anyway, letter writer Nathan Post (“Voter ID cards are easy to get,” Voices, Dec. 13), chimed in on my comment that one of the classic ways in which the vote is suppressed is by requiring IDs. Mr. Post notes that “it is not difficult to obtain ID that is acceptable for voting purposes.” He also listed all the types of IDs that Georgia accepts. Some IDs were federal, some were from Georgia governments, public universities and so forth.
The issue is not the number and type of IDs that are available, but the ease of acquiring one. Maybe that is changing in Georgia, I can’t say.
But given the difficulties experienced in the 2018 Georgia election with respect to reduction of voting locations, voting delays in minority areas and other considerations, one can be skeptical about the ease with which minorities can obtain those needed IDs. In addition, nothing is said about the types of proof required to get those IDs, the absence of which results in a denial.
Well, the 2020 election demonstrated that blacks really do care. Minority voting in Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia may have been sufficient to turn the election to Joe Biden.
Bill Rosen
Goleta
