Anticipating Election Day, May 21, I am forced to face two of my greatest disappointments: citizens who don’t take the time to vote, and the Republican Party’s promotion of voter suppression.

The right to vote is the bedrock principle of our democracy. For someone to casually forego this opportunity is the height of civic irresponsibility. My contempt for this is exceeded only by my loathing of the widespread practice by the Republican Party of voter suppression.

One searches in vain for evidence of the Republican Party’s effort to make voting easier for the poor, elderly, handicapped, minorities and the rurally isolated. On the contrary, efforts continue by red state legislatures to curtail and obstruct the voting rights of the above mentioned, e.g. eliminating polling places, difficult voter ID laws, restricting voting days and hours, gerrymandering, purging voter rolls and many other legislative tricks. Check out Wikipedia’s “Voter Suppression in the United States” — but have your barf bag handy.

Concern for voter fraud is the Republicans’ stock response for their voter suppression machinations. But this won’t wash, as they have never offered any proof that this is a credible problem. President Trump’s short-lived voter fraud commission collapsed after drawing bipartisan outrage.

Why do otherwise patriotic, upstanding Republicans permit/encourage their party and elected reps to get away with these blatant attacks on our democracy? And we are concerned about the threat from Russian interference in our elections. Hilarious!

Robert Jedrzejewski

Tarentum

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