Editor:

A response to the “Voter ID is just another attempt to prevent some from voting” column by Will Sullivan in the February 12 Picayune Item is needed due to Mr. Sullivan great strides to distort the issues. First, the movement to require voter ID was not meant to keep people from voting but to keep people from voting multiple times, the dead from voting, and illegal immigrants from voting. Second, even after voting and living here for ten years, my wife does not know the people at the voting precinct nor do they know her other than a name on a roster form. Third, this is not an attempt to move back to the days of the literacy tests and poll taxes and to compare the issues of the civil rights era with a petition to require people to prove who they are in order to protect all of us against fraud is disingenuous by the author.

Mr. Sullivan says that people who do not have a photo ID “will feel intimidated at having to do something they don’t have to do for almost every other activity they participate in, unless they get a traffic ticket.” There a lot of things that we need identification that we didn’t need to have in previous years such as writing checks, presenting a credit card, purchasing an airline ticket, getting on an airplane, etc. Do people feel it is a violation of their civil rights when they have to present identification for those things? No we usually understand why it is asked for and we should have no problem presenting our identification for voting because it protects all of us. This is not a civil rights issue, but an American issue aimed at protecting the rights and accuracy of voting decisions by all people.

Jack Onstott