State voter ID laws are essential

Letter date: 
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Letter publisher: 
The Register Guard
Letter author: 
Braxton Johnson
Letter body: 

I feel compelled to respond to Catherine Rampell’s Nov. 13 column (“Voter ID laws may have had an effect”).

She stated, “Voter suppression efforts may have changed the outcome of some of the closest races in the mid-term elections last week.” The “efforts” she referred to were attempts to meet the constitutional requirement that all voters must be U.S. citizens.

Rampell went on to state that having to prove one is a citizen of our country costs “both time and money.” In my opinion, no money could be better spent.

She also said that in Kansas 21,000 people tried to register to vote but failed because they lacked the “necessary documentary proof of citizenship.”

If someone can’t prove they’re a citizen, they shouldn’t be trying to vote.

In Oregon, a measure to allow illegal immigrants to have driver cards had less to do with driving than with voting.

Voting’s one of the most sacred privileges we have in our country and every U.S. citizen should fulfill that obligation.

The Democrats didn’t take a shellacking on Nov. 4 because they didn’t get enough non-citizens to vote, they lost because the American people are sick and tired of the failed socialist agenda of the Obama administration and the billions of taxpayer dollars it has wasted.

Lying to the American people from the top didn’t translate into winning votes at the state level for politicians who supported those lies — although, it seems to still work in Oregon.