Letter: Universal standards needed for elections

Does France have more voter integrity than the United States? Yes.

French voters vote on Sunday, not a workday or holiday, the Sabbath, a day of abstinence from work. Voters must be at least 18 years old, and about 48.7 million French are registered on the electoral rolls of the place where they live.

Despite periodic calls for more flexibility or modernization, France doesn't do mail-in voting, early voting or use voting machine, just like our Founding Fathers instituted after writing our Constitution.

As late as Saturday, the states of Arizona and Nevada did not have the final results of their election from the previous Tuesday.

In the eyes of the world, our elections are those of a third-rate country. Even Afghanistan, a backward nation, had election results within 24 hours.

Wake-up America. Let's have universal standards with a return to paper ballots, 30 days of early in-person voting and absentee ballots requested by people unable to be present on Election Day - not a permanent mail-in voting system establish in Illinois when you sign up.

The COVID pandemic has turned a functioning election system into a permanent mail-in system with potential for fraud and gives every citizen, including potential nonlegal residents, a carefree voting system with no appreciation of the right to vote in America.

Even President Jimmy Carter understood the inefficiency of our election system on establishing the Carter-Baker Commission. In fact, the final report concluded that mail-in balloting is inherently vulnerable to all sorts of fraud and abuse. Our politicians have a self-interest in a broken election system that inherently gives the incumbent an election advantage.

Let's speak up for America now.

Robert Meale

Crystal Lake