Letter: Voter ID is the wrong cure

Imagine telling your doctor you're short of breath, feel tightness in your chest and have shooting pains down your left arm.

Now imagine your doctor doesn't look up but says, well, I've always been worried that your vision might get worse, so let's get you an operation for cataracts.

That is essentially the haughty mis-prescription being offered us by the Secretary of State.

Our democracy is indeed in some danger, but evidently not from fraudulent voters. Foreign states hack candidates' emails to stir up scandal. Many voters lack the critical-thinking skills to spot fake news. A third of eligible voters don't vote.

But instead of addressing such obvious challenges to democracy, the Secretary of State thinks he can calm voters' justified worries with new big-government requirements for voter ID.

Has he forgotten the several-hundred-thousand-dollar snipe hunt of his predecessor, which disproved fantasies of widespread voter fraud and demonstrated instead that Iowa's elections already have extremely high integrity?

Don't let the doctor's white coat fool you. The voter ID proposal is not being floated now to calm our worries about threats to democracy.

It's being floated because the party that controls the Legislature and governor's office hopes to entrench its power by making it harder for those on the margins to vote: students, minorities, immigrant citizens, the poor.

Iowa taxpayers, before you undergo million-dollar surgery at your own expense to improve already excellent polling-place mechanisms, consider getting a second opinion.

John Chaimov

Cedar Rapids