I am a former elected Democratic Party precinct committeeman and a former elected delegate to my state’s Democratic Party convention. I say that the voting rights law which is being considered now is anti-democratic because it would not require people to show a valid ID to vote.
When I was a precinct committeeman, if someone wanted to vote but I did not believe that the person was from my precinct, I would ask to see some government issued ID. I did not try to prevent the person from voting. I tried to help the person vote at the correct polling location.
The people of my precinct had legitimate votes to cast. Outsiders did not have a right to vote at the polling location for our precinct. If I had let anyone and everyone who wanted to vote at my precinct’s polling station, I would have helped to dilute the power of each legitimate vote. It would have been a great disservice to every legitimate voter in the precinct.
In the past, my state outlawed taverns and saloons to be open during voting hours on election day. That was to make it more difficult for political agents of dishonest candidates to pay people with drinks for going to various precincts to vote under the names of people who were dead but had not yet had their names removed from the voter lists.
Democracy requires that we protect the power of each honest vote of legitimate voters. To do that, we must prevent pretenders from voting at polling places where they do not belong. Protecting the power of each legitimate vote protects democracy. Making it easy for dishonest pretenders to vote destroys the legitimacy of elections.
