George Terhaar takes a shot at Rich Elfers for his concern about voter ID requirements in regards to Georgia’s new restrictive voting laws (“Georgia voting laws and my ID,” published May 5). He feels that, since so many transactions require some form of ID, that these new restrictions are perfectly reasonable.

He then goes on to compare Georgia’s restrictive laws to Colorado’s current voting procedures, so let’s see what a real comparison looks like. Colorado requires ID when people register to vote, after which they are mailed a ballot in every subsequent election, checking their signature on that ballot with the signature on file. Nearly all of Colorado’s voters vote by mail, while Georgia requires ID every time a person votes and actively discourages mail-in ballots.

Colorado is constantly adding drop boxes while Georgia is doing just the opposite, severely reducing drop boxes in areas where there are large populations of color.

Colorado accepts 16 forms of ID; Georgia, 6.

We can all certainly agree that candidates and campaign workers should not be allowed near polling places and that could easily be addressed with specific restrictions, not by making it a crime for anyone to provide food or drink to people in line to vote.

Since Mr. Terhaar has no insight into the decision making process that led to the move of the All-Star game, he has little right to call it a “knee-jerk” reaction. Georgia and many other states’ reaction to the loss of the presidency is to greatly restrict the voting rights of minorities, even though there was zero evidence of voter fraud, except by a few Republicans, one who voted for his dead mother and another who went around collecting ballots.

Simply put, Republicans, having nothing new to offer voters, feel the need to restrict the people who can vote to people that look like them. This situation is not “much ado about nothing” — it is a blatant attack on our Democracy and needs to be fought at every turn.

Larry Benson

Enumclaw