Relax Restrictive Voter Laws and Procedures Immediately!
The manufactured fear of voter fraud is enabling those in power across the country to prevent thousands of people from exercising their right to vote.
Recent studies have shown that the records of incidences of voter fraud make it virtually a non-issue -- and certainly not one that needs strict laws to prevent it. But when I went to vote early on Monday, it took me over two hours to make it past the "anti voter fraud" sham.
At my polling place in Savannah, Georgia, they had about ten voting machines that sat mostly empty for the majority of that time, while one/sometimes two Voter Registration verification "clerks" held up the line trying to get to the voting machines. They only allowed folks to trickle through at a rate of about one every five minutes -- if that.
While I was there, several would-be voters left the early voting location without voting. Unfortunately, undue "molestation" works.
This disruption of the process must not be allowed to continue. If unnecessarily restrictive laws and procedures are already inhibiting people from voting now, what will they do on Election Day?
Call on Georgia and other states with Voter ID Restriction laws to relax such unnecessary, unjust rules and procedures immediately.
I am writing to urge you to relax the laws you have in place regarding stopping "voter fraud."
Many in-depth studies have shown that voter fraud is a virtually non-existent problem. Far more troubling is the lengths to which anti-voter fraud laws have been taken. Across the country, reports are trickling in of elderly, impoverished, or working Americans unable to cast their vote due to ID restrictions or time constraints.
Procedures are a large part of the problem. When these laws are in place, they allow "clerks" to effectively inhibit the voting process by forcing would-be voters to undergo lengthy and unnecessary ID checks. This severely disrupts people's ability to realistically cast their vote, particularly if they are students or full-time workers.
There is no reason that our civic right to participate in election should be hampered by trumped-up fears of corruption. We demand that you relax anti-voter fraud laws immediately.
