Editor’s note: This letter is in response to the April 7 editorial, “Expanding Access to the ballot box.”
The underlying message I found in the editorial where you bring up Jim Crow is that white Republicans work to suppress the minority vote. The Jim Crow laws and the KKK belong to the Democrat party that has always used and abused minorities, particularly Black people, since long before there was a Republican party, which was actually formed in part to combat slavery. Democratic President Woodrow Wilson lauded the KKK for their efforts.
In recent years, the only blatant intimidation of voters was by the Black Panthers in Philadelphia, where President Barack Obama’s attorney general Eric Holder dropped the charges brought against them.
Let’s just be honest. The loosening of election laws makes fraud easier. The standard has to be strict to give our elections some credibility. You vote in person on Election Day with a voter ID, and if you can’t, then there is the absentee ballot. The reason our voting laws have to be strict is exactly what Gov. Phil Murphy said, “Voting is our most sacred American right.”
Joe Hegarty
