Voter identification key to ballot security

In a recent Daily Herald editorial letter entitled "Beware impact voter suppression laws" the writer fails to identify the so called "suppression" aspects of the "Beware." Instead, she immediately resorts to partisan identitarian descriptors like "voter suppression acts," "undemocratic laws," republican dictatorship" and "Jim Crow." This doesn't help people understand what's at issue regarding the voting laws controversy.

The genesis of states' voter system fortification efforts is basically twofold: continuing the voter ID and verification requirements and reining in ballot harvesting. Regarding voter ID, if we cannot identify the voter, we cannot identify the legitimacy of their vote. And if a percentage of these votes is illegitimate, that segment is unlawful. "Unlawful" means illegal. It's hard to imagine that this might be OK with any American. Survey after survey shows that Americans of all stripes favor keeping voter ID laws in place. Recognizing that our vote is our voice, all attempts to identify the voter would seem foundational at a minimum. Given the fact that our everyday life requires us to prove our identity, why would voting be an outlier?

"Ballot harvesting" is a process whereby completed ballots are collected by third parties which adds a middleman group to the voting process. This opens many scary doors. Yet as outrageous as this practice might seem, efforts to challenge ballot harvesting are tagged "voter suppression."

In her closing, the author advocates that we "take a look at history to see how all the dictators of the world started out." Is she really comparing today's efforts to strengthen our voting systems to the foundations of dictatorships? I cannot make such a leap. Simply put, all the dictators of the world started out peddling utopian socialist ideologies based on false promises. It doesn't work.

Lewis Landry

Mundelein