Letters to the editor: Examining voting law; the Manchurian candidates

Facts about Georgia voting law

Let’s examine the facts. What exactly did the new Georgia voting rights law do?

It expanded the forms of identification that could be used by voter at the polls (35 states require voter to show some form of identification to vote).

It eliminated all restrictions as to who and why a person could request a mail in ballot.

It expanded the number of early voting days to four weeks (this is longer than all but eight other states).

It mandated into law a requirement to have ballot drop-off boxes and set a minimum number required for every 100,000 registered voters (less than half of the states allow drop-off boxes).

Based on the old law, every aspect of the new law expanded voting rights in some way.

So why, you might ask, are people are so upset? Two reasons. 1.) It didn’t go as far as the temporarily emergency rules that were put in place for the election 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2) It clarified that the section of the law prohibiting any attempt to influencing voters withing 150 feet of a polling place, included the act of distributing food or water to people waiting in line. That upset a lot of people even though almost every state in the union has a similar rule. What do you think would have happened to someone wearing a MAGA hat if they had attempted to distribute food or water around a polling place in San Francisco?

Now that you know the facts. Do you think President Biden was right when he called the new Georgia law a return to the Jim Crow-era South? Or as some people have speculated, if the federal Voting Rights law doesn’t pass, the 2022 election will be illegitimate?

Dennis Lane, Thousand Oaks

Strangulation of our democracy

The fact that Sen. Joe Manchin was willing to lie about the voting bill in his speech in the Senate, and the fact that he has repeatedly backtracked from earlier positions is proof beyond a doubt that he was never going to vote for the bill. His charade about “negotiating” with the GOP was just a way to kill time and delay the vote.

He and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema are truly Manchurian candidates being used as puppets by the Republicans, who know they cannot win elections without cheating. We are witnessing the strangulation of our democracy.

Alex Magdaleno, Camarillo

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Letters: Examining voting law; the Manchurian candidates