Check voting rolls with care, fairness

Just when I think that the Democrats and Republicans have reached an all-time low during election season, they manage to become sleazier, more devious and blatantly lie to the American people.

As if the absurd lies and distortions from both sides, weren’t bad enough, now we have to deal with another across-the-board effort, by Republican-run states, to disenfranchise African-American and Hispanic-American citizens from voting in the November elections. And to add more stupidity to the fire, they are also adding American citizens who have been voting since as far back as the late 1940s to the list of people who they claim are not eligible to vote. It isn’t a coincidence that the overwhelming majority of the people being removed are Democrats.

I’m all for getting illegal immigrants off the voting rolls, but there has to be a better way. By removing qualified citizens in order to get a few unqualified ones, the Republicans are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The Republicans in Florida say that even if several thousand people on their lists are legitimate voters, it’s a drop in the bucket to the millions of votes cast in the U.S. That’s true, but the thousands of legitimate African-American, Hispanic and Caucasian voters they were able to illegally remove from the voter rolls just before the 2000 election allowed George W. Bush to win Florida and the election by only 527 votes. By the way, they admitted gross errors in that list after the election was over and the Supreme Court came up with their absurd decision.

This is not what I offered to give my life for when I joined the military during the Korean War. For the first time in my 78 years, I am ashamed of what’s going on in this country.

Len Brauer

Palatine