In a letter to the editor, NewsOK reader Connor Bannon of Edmond responds to the recent editorial trying to defend Oklahoma’s Voter ID law using a North Carolina study. In this letter, Connor uses the evidence, or lack thereof, that Texas used in trying to justify its Voter ID law. Here is that letter in full:
Regarding “Overblown: N.C. study rebuts voter ID claims” (Our Views, July 25): Voter ID laws serve as clear examples of government solutions in search of nonexistent problems. Granted, the new laws don’t, as many on the left suggest, present an insurmountable challenge to individual voters. However, they do place an unnecessary burden upon many of our fellow citizens.
Voter fraud isn’t a problem that plagues any state. Consider the “prevalence” of voter fraud in Texas, a state that passed voter ID legislation similar to North Carolina’s. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot found that from 2002 to 2012, there were just 100 federal prosecutions and 50 state convictions for voter fraud. That would mean an average of 15 prosecutions and convictions per year. To put the number into context, Texas has a population of approximately 26 million and cast 7,962,799 votes in the 2012 election. This means voter fraud is committed, as a percentage of Texas votes, at a rate of 0.000188 percent, and as a percentage of the Texas population, 0.0000576 percent. The percentage of Americans struck by lightning annually is 0.000143 percent — greater than the occurrence of voter fraud as a percentage of Texans.
Once again, keep the letters rolling. We love reading them and love seeing them published.
