|
This is my recent LTE regarding Voter ID as published in the Keene Sentinel this past Sunday.
http://sentinelsource.com/opin...
"One can certainly be puzzled, frustrated and angry at the recent votes by Rep. Robert Moore (R-Westmoreland, Surry and Gilsum) that would have made it more difficult for our citizens to participate fully in our democracy.
His efforts to diminish the voting rights of Granite Staters by requiring government issued photo ID in order to vote was wisely rejected by our governor and a sufficient number of state senators, including Democratic Senator Molly Kelly and Republican Senator Robert Odell.
As is widely known, there is no evidence in Cheshire District 1, in the State of New Hampshire, nor in the entire country of a kind of voter fraud that such a photo ID law would affect.
In 2005, the Texas attorney general spent two years and a $1.4 million Justice Department grant only to find no cases of voter impersonation fraud.
The New York Times reported in 2007 that a Bush Justice Department investigation over five years found no examples of a person voting as someone else.
So why would Mr. Moore and other New Hampshire legislators on the far right push for such a law? Surely he knew that SB-129 had an estimated cost of over $200,000 over the next four years, according to the Secretary of State's office. Costs that would include longer town clerk office hours after elections in many towns; costs for training sessions for election workers and for citizens; costs for increasing the number of election workers.
Surely Mr. Moore knew that the bill failed to allocate a single dollar in the state budget to pay for that $200,000. So Mr. Moore was apparently happy to have the property owners of Westmoreland and the other cities and towns in the Granite State pick up the tab.
Apparently Mr. Moore doesn't feel our local property taxes are high enough. Maybe doing what the free staters and the tea party want is more important to Mr. Moore than how much property owners in Surry and Gilsum pay in property taxes.
My mother was a high school history and civics teacher in the public schools. Part of what she taught middle schoolers was that voting was an important right and an important duty of all citizens.
Civic leaders, whether Republican or Democratic, have traditionally urged all citizens to register to vote and to vote. Many democracies have much high voter participation than we do in the United States. Over the many years, brave Americans soldiers have died in this country and on foreign soil to protect our right to vote. Such sacrifice should not be given the back of the hand by those following an extreme out-of-state agenda.
Why would Mr. Moore vote for such a law? Perhaps it is because he knew that those whom he would block from voting, in large measure, would be the poor, the elderly, the minorities, those with disabilities, those whose drivers licenses have expired, women whose drivers' licenses have not been updated with married names or new addresses.
And perhaps some or many of those individuals would not vote in large measure for the free staters or the tea party or for Mr. Moore.
But is that a reason for Mr. Moore to keep these folks from voting? Who does he think he represents? In Westmoreland, there is a nursing home, Maplewood. I dare say, since I have visited there, that most try to vote, either by absentee ballot or by being transported to the polls. I also figure that many, if not most, do not have such photo ID that would allow them to vote in Mr. Moore's world.
Who is Mr. Moore representing when his efforts diminish the ability of our relatives and friends in Maplewood from voting?
Who is Mr. Moore representing when he votes to increase our property taxes to "fix" a "problem" than only exists in the mind of the very far right wing?"
|
