Voter suppression, or fraud prevention? Eagle printing mail ballot application draws kudos, criticism | Letters
Editor’s note: The following letters are in response to Sunday’s Eagle editorial, “Sedgwick County thumbs its nose at mail voters”, which includes a copy of the application to obtain a mail ballot for the Nov. 7 election.
Support democracy
Four of our Sedgwick County Commissioners, Jim Howell, Ryan Baty, Pete Meizner, and David Dennis are afraid to allow local voters to vote by mail after one of their old boys club brethren, former Commissioner Michael O’Donnell, lost his county commission seat, when Mr. O’Donnell’s participation in a sleazily false attack video on the present Wichita mayor was exposed by the Wichita Eagle.
Sedgwick County Commissioner Sarah Lopez is in favor of participatory democracy in the state voting process, while the holdover boys club county commissioners revoked a policy of sending out forms to vote by mail.
This policy allowing the county to mail the form to voters had been in existence for fourteen years until the old boys club members voted it down last year.
I have a call in to the advertising department of the Wichita Eagle asking how much it costs for printing the Sedgwick County Election Office Application For An Advance Voting Ballot form in future daily newspaper editions until the November 7 election.
I volunteer to help front the cost and request donations from county citizens to fund printing the election form so folks can vote by mail.
I don’t want voters to be walking in freezing November rain to vote, as I did a few years ago.
We should rid our Sedgwick County Commission of the four self-serving boys club members who want to put the freeze on Sedgwick County voters sending in votes by mail.
Michael Snider, Wichita
Left wing cheating
Thank you to the Sedgwick County Commission for expanding polling locations and taking steps to prevent election fraud by not mailing advance ballot applications to people who did not request them.
In the last few years, several states, counties, and cities have had the veracity of their elections challenged and many of those challenges focus on the handling of mail-in ballots.
Not so in Kansas. Our elections remain fair and honest.
How do I know our elections are free of cheating? Because if the American left could cheat and rig elections in Kansas, Kris Kobach would not be Kansas Attorney General.
Robb Reeves, Wichita
Encouraging mail vote ‘disgusting’
The Wichita Eagle Editorial Board is certainly within its democratic right to declare itself blatantly progressive.
But this lifelong RINO (Republican In Name Only) is deeply offended by their suggestion that not funding a global mail ballot application is partisan while their publishing a form known to advocate for their progressive orientation is somehow pro-democracy and not partisan is just flat wrong.
Suggesting the form be copied and distributed is disgusting.
Back in the Stone Age when this retired rocket scientist was a participant in the Southeast Asia War Games, a mail-in absentee ballot was requested and executed. That was its intended purpose for those unable to get to their polling place. It was not leverage for a particular partisan political ideology.
It is the height of hypocrisy for the Eagle to justifiably excoriate those responsible for a prior cheap trick to embarrass their favored candidate for mayor, but publish a form intending to advocate for their political orientation at the ballot box.
It is far more democratic to go to the polls, validate an identity and vote choices while providing an alternative for those unable or unwilling to attend.
Leland Johnson, Wichita
