Republican state Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer imagines voter fraud and believes the "answer to that is transparency" ("GOP calls for more limits on voters," front page, March 7). Transparency requires truth-telling and not selling a problem that doesn't exist.
Clearly, Minnesota does not have voter fraud worthy of legislative attention. A dozen or so votes out of millions cast do not warrant the voting burdens Kiffmeyer and the Republicans want to place on exercising one's right to vote.
Undeterred, Kiffmeyer claims "folks ask these questions" about voter fraud and "we should try to get them answered." It's easy to get them answered: There isn't any meaningful voter fraud. The U.S. Supreme Court and more than 60 court cases from jurisdictions across the nation universally rejected the voter fraud claims of Republicans. "Folks ask these questions" due to the Republican drumbeat of false accusations of rampant voter fraud.
Kiffmeyer's concern about a nonexistent problem provides a window into the Republicans' sheer fear of people exercising their right to vote in large numbers. In the U.S. Supreme Court oral argument recently regarding Arizona efforts to restrict voting rights, the attorney for the GOP answered Justice Amy Coney Barrett's question "what's the interest" to Republicans in these voter restrictions: "Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats."
It is crystal-clear that Kiffmeyer and the Republicans seek to restrict the right to vote for partisan advantage, not because of the mirage of voter fraud. The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized that the right to vote freely "is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government."
It is easy to see through Kiffmeyer's claimed transparency but, frankly, it is a dirty pane in the glass.
Brad Engdahl, Golden Valley
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Included in the nationwide assault on voting rights pending in state legislatures are provisions in Georgia that will not only chop the number of early voting days by one-third but also criminalize the providing of water and food to people waiting in long lines. Anyone who says this nonsense is about election integrity is lying to the public.
Richard Robbins, Mankato
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Here's a radical idea for the GOP: Find some planks for your platform to draw voters in rather than building legislative walls to keep voters out. Is suppressing the votes of millions of Americans the only idea the GOP can conjure to try to keep its power as an ever-shrinking minority party? Where are GOP solutions to our nation's problems? How about suppressing domestic terrorism — an actual, demonstrable threat? The radical nationwide moves by the GOP at voter disenfranchising are as astoundingly troubling as they are desperate.