In his Nov. 4 column “Fraudulent strategies to pursue the black vote know no bounds,” Thomas Sowell argues for the existence of voter fraud and offers an example where absentee ballots are mailed without request, then overseers arrive to help the voter fill them out, or even just take and fill out the ballots. Yes, it’s fraud, but not the kind of fraud that an ID can fix.
Then later he boasts that more Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which they did. But he fails to mention that in the years following that vote Southern Democrats (aka: Dixiecrats) jumped ship, leaving the Democratic Party, and today form the strongest arm of the GOP.
Yes, Sowell, use history but use all of it.
Yes, Republicans are responsible for the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment, and winning the Civil War. The GOP (under Teddy Roosevelt) also had a strong hand in minimum wages and fair labor standards. Today that same GOP fights all of these things and more. Why? Because in the 1870s and 1880s they sold themselves out to Big Business, and in the late 1960s they frosted that cake with the addition of Southern bigots.
Lincoln and Teddy would not recognize their party today. Such a shame.
Joseph R. Maurer
Vancouver
