To the Editor-

I am politically active. I’ve done simple things for the Democrats like clean bathrooms and bake cookies. I’ve done harder things like knock on doors urging people to vote for my candidate or phone people to find out how they plan to vote. I’ve stood outside in the rain and snow collecting recall signatures and I’ve even been arrested for singing in Madison.

Here’s what I have never done and would never consider trying to do: I have never voted twice. Many of my friends are also political activists and none of them have voted twice or urged anyone else to vote twice. We activists aren’t double voters. We believe in the cornerstone of democracy – one person one vote. Besides, we’re all busy on Election Day working at the polls, making last minute calls to remind people to vote, or getting party food together for the victory celebration. Just who would risk committing a felony to vote twice? I can think of no one.

Voter ID laws really have only one purpose and that’s to suppress the vote of minorities and college students. Todd Albaugh, chief-of-staff for a Republican senator, was in the room when voter ID was being considered by Republicans and the discussion sickened him. He has said, “It left a pit in my stomach to think that a party I had worked for for years and years was literally plotting to deny someone, a fellow citizen, their constitutional right.”

I find it hard to believe that Republicans so shamelessly defend voter ID laws. If my party tried a similar thing to deny white rural men or maybe billionaires with comb overs the right to vote, I would feel sickened just like Todd Albaugh and would be gutsy enough like him to say it was unjust.

Leigh Allgaier
Stevens Point