I write with gratitude for Sen. Craig Hickman’s piece, “Protecting voter rights” (May 2). Sen. Hickman writes, “When we erode any citizen’s right to vote, we endanger the life of our democracy.”

He knows of what he speaks: Though the 19th Amendment was passed in 1919, his own mother, along with black women of that era, did not receive “legal protection of her right to to cast a ballot … until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” (I was a senior in high school that fall, I remember this, remember its intent to secure voter participation for all.)

Now in his third term on the Joint Standing Committee on Veterans Legal Affairs, Sen. Hickman writes that he “is familiar with the contours and nuances of the laws governing elections.” The number of restrictive voting bills in various states changes daily, even though, as Sen. Hickman states, “the federal government has called our 2020 election ‘the most secure in American history.'”

We need to watch this battle closely. Sen. Hickman says, “I’ll be on the frontlines of that fight.” And guess what else he says: “Your vote matters to me — especially if you disagree … because I believe, fully, that your vote matters as much as mine.”

That’s it, right there. That’s what this fight is all about.

 

Elizabeth Cooke

Hallowell

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