Let Secretary of State Schultz do his job

There have been a number of guest columns and letters recently that have been critical of Secretary of State Matt Schultz's efforts at cleaning up the lists of registered voters. They claim that voter fraud is not a significant problem and should not merit much thought or effort. This is not true.

In a study published earlier this year by the non-partisan Pew Center, almost 2 million deceased individuals were found on voter rolls, more than 2.5 million are registered in more than one state, and 12 million records have incorrect addresses or similar inaccuracies.

A Mississippi woman, Lessadolla Sowers, is serving time in prison after being convicted last year of submitting absentee ballots in the name of 10 different people. Earlier this year, a young activist working with undercover reporter James O'Keefe was offered Attorney General Eric Holder's ballot at Holder's voting precinct.

With these in mind, how can one say that voter fraud is not important? Secretary Schultz has been assigned by those who elected him to be in charge of our electoral process. His top priority should be to make sure that the elections are 100 percent clean and trustworthy. I applaud his efforts.

The officials at the Olympics go to great lengths to be sure that the competitions are fair and honest. Shouldn't we also do whatever it takes to make sure that something much more important, our ability to elect our government leaders, is equally fair and honest?

Darren Davenport

Cedar Rapids