Dear Editor:

They’ve been dead for years, but keep on voting. Drug lords buy votes from poor people and elect officials who will allow them to continue their drug trade. Non-citizens are bussed to the polls and coached on how to vote. House pets vote and are even elected to office.

States all over the country are moving to stop these travesties. But the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Eric Holder, has blocked these states at almost every turn.

This is the same justice department that blocked election reform by arguing that unless candidates were clearly linked to a specific political party, African-American voters wouldn’t be able to identify and vote for the Democrats.

Holder also claims that requiring voters to produce pictured ID would disenfranchise minorities, even though states that have required IDs offer them free of charge to those who request them.

In Kansas, for example, only 32 people, 0.002 percent of the registered voters in the state, had requested a free photo ID as of May 4, 2012. Of those 32, 80 percent were white, 10 percent were black and the race or ethnicity of 10 percent was unknown.

In Georgia, voter ID laws were introduced in 2007. What happened to minority voting after the law went into effect? Hispanic voting increased by 140 percent over the 2004 election. African-American voting increased by 42 percent. Those are higher rated of increase than in other state without voter ID.

A requirement for pictured IDs does not suppress minority voting. Americans cannot allow election to be anything but secure and legal.

For what possible reason would the Holder/U.S. Justice Department refuse to allow states to prevent voter fraud?

Ronald B. Elder, M.D.

Russellville