An open letter to Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Tom Tiffany

To the Editor:

I’m writing to urge you to vote against the President’s SAVE Act, the bill to require states to make people provide strict proof of citizenship to register to vote, to show certain limited forms of ID when casting a ballot, and to require states to turn over confidential information about voters to the federal government.

This would be a drastic change from our federal constitutional system where the states have always managed elections, and done it well. It took years to get rid of the “Jim Crow” laws, where some states tried to manipulate elections to prevent Black people from voting. Why should we now want to pass a law that’s predicted to disenfranchise as many was 20 percent of voters — White as well as Black, Republicans as much as everyone else? Shouldn’t we be encouraging more people to vote, rather than setting up new requirements that such large numbers of people can’t meet? There’s a glaring contrast between this bill and the bi-partisan Help America Vote Act of 2002, passed to solve actual problems and to make it easier to vote.

Over the past five years, it has been proven over and over that there is no significant fraudulent voting in this country and that we have adequate methods of catching any that happens. The number of non-citizens actually voting is similar to the number of Republicans who have voted a deceased spouse’s absentee ballot — an extremely low number in either case. And they got caught!

Don’t you think voters are left wondering why our representatives in Congress are spending time on this bill, rather than dealing with the urgent issues that threaten the safety of the American people?

The main point is that this bill is both unconstitutional and unnecessary. If you really believe, in spite of all the facts, that our election system is so riddled with fraud that our elections are invalid, then simple logic would require you to resign, since you hold office only by virtue of this same system.

Gerald Anderson

Rhinelander