Fred Joesting, Sartell
If you read closely in the Opinion and Our View columns of Dennis Dalman you will find a sentence that should be the goal of everybody. “The main law should forbid partisan control over election processes at every level.” But when reading the two columns by Dalman, all you hear him talking about is what he perceives as Republican efforts to suppress votes and other forms of voter fraud. I am in no way indicating there is no fraud and suppression by Republicans. However, if Dalman would expand his horizon to hear from some independents and conservatives he would find allegations against Democrats are also substantial. The Newsleader prints a section telling us “staff members have the responsibility to report news fairly and accurately and are accountable to the public.” To be fair and accurate it seems to me one has to look at fraud and suppression by anyone regardless of party affiliation.
Gov. Dayton aired many ads about defeating the amendment for voter photo identification because he said we had to go back and get it right. Now we hope Dayton and the Democrats will work with the Republicans to get a bill on voter photo identification done. Hopefully saying we have to go back and get it right was an honest statement and not just a fraudulent way of defeating the amendment.
One of the things Dalman lists as attempting to suppress voting is “purges of names on voter registration lists.” Does he want names to stay on forever once someone has voted? If you want a fair election the only names on a list should be legal voters. If someone has died, if someone has moved or if someone has committed a felony then those names need to come off the voter registration list. To not do so enables fraud to happen.
Dalman talks about “”Attack ads against Obama.” I am sad to say there were definitely attack ads against Obama but also very sadly there were attack ads against almost everybody running as a Republican or as a Democrat. Obama’s campaign spent months attacking Romney even before he won the nomination. Dalman decries “despicable statements made by Rush Limbaugh and Tea Party extremists.” But I did not see him worried about the same kind of statements by extremists like Move-On and the Democratic National Campaign groups.
I wonder how Dalman feels about the ultimate voter suppression? The disenfranchisement of millions because of abortion.