Mike Hinton: Conservatives ignore voter suppression

Regarding the Dec. 7 column “Let’s clean up voter rolls”: OK, we get it that J. Peder Zane thinks voter fraud may be a problem, as do most conservatives, but will Zane also acknowledge that voter suppression is also a problem?

Does he even care when it has been proven time and time again that eligible voters who have a constitutional right to vote are denied that right in the name of fighting voter fraud? Is it important to him that many eligible voters are often denied their right to vote simply because it is been alleged that a handful of people might be committing this fraud? Is one form of fraud really that much more important than the other, or is the real question about who benefits?

There have been many cases where cleaning up voter rolls have resulted in eligible voters going to the polls, only to be told they are no longer registered because of voter roll clean-ups. The fact remains that while in-person voter fraud may be theoretically possible, doing so would be extremely difficult for the vast majority of voters.

It will ease my cynicism about this when I see conservatives giving at least equal weight to both problems, and not just the one that they believe is hurting their own chosen ideology.

This story was originally published December 21, 2016 at 7:52 PM with the headline "Mike Hinton: Conservatives ignore voter suppression."