Letter: Two faces of voter fraud

There have been several letters to the editor recently concerning voting rights; let me add one more.

Voting rights can be diminished in two ways. The first is by unreasonably restricting peoples access to the poles. The second is by overly lax access to the poles and fraud.

If people who fail to meet the law's requirements to vote are voting, e.g. they are not living, they are not citizens, they are too young or there is fraud by ballot box stuffing or deceitful vote counting, then the legitimate votes that are cast are diminished in their value.

Furthermore, when the apparent winner on election night ends up losing the election because of votes that come in days or even weeks later, this does not engender confidence in the system and in fact exposes the system to additional avenues for fraud. The system needs to be protected by regulations and restrictions, and if it is not, we do not have a system but just a free-for-all.

Mark Bodett