Letter to the editor: HR 1 won't restore election integrity

On Jan. 11, President Biden spoke about House Resolution 1 as a voting rights bill vital for the future of our democracy. Is that true, or is it only vital to avert the red wave coming in 2022?

My reading of H.R. 1 is that it would give the federal government the power to forbid states to require photo ID, forbid states from cleaning their voter registration rolls, ban states from preserving the record of paper ballots and force states to expand mail-in voting, which makes ballot harvesting easier and does nothing to ensure the integrity of the vote.

Did you know 46 of 47 European countries currently require government-­issued photo IDs to vote? Canada requires a photo ID to vote. In Mexico, voters must now present a biometric ID (photo and a thumbprint), and the percent of people voting in Mexico rose from 59% to 68% after the reforms, according to John R. Lott Jr., founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, writing for Hillsdale College’s Imprimis.

Instead of being viewed as “voter suppression,” it gave people confidence that their votes mattered.

Absentee voting with appropriate safeguards is fine, but mail-in voting with ballots simply mailed out to everyone makes voter fraud and ballot harvesting way too easy. H.R. 1 would require states to allow permanent mail-in voting.

Please tell your elected representatives you are opposed to removing the responsibility of election integrity from the states and ceding it to the federal bureaucracy. Oppose H.R. 1.

Jim Ludwig

Ross