Another predictable attack on GOP

To the editor:

Once again, the Review-Journal's Erin Neff airily dismisses concerns regarding ACORN and voter fraud, opting instead to use her column to accuse the GOP of voter suppression. After ACORN's offices in Las Vegas were raided, Ms. Neff claimed that only a few hundred registrations were questionable, and she brushed off worries about thousands of others, saying the fraudulent ones were discovered, so all is well.

Ms. Neff, all is not well in this election. In more that 10 states, most of them crucial battleground states, ACORN is being investigated for fraud. In Ohio, 200,000 registrations have discrepancies between information on the registration and that of the Department of Motor Vehicles or Social Security. In a state such as Ohio, where fewer than 150,000 votes decided the 2004 election, the integrity of the vote is paramount.

Day after day in the news, we see the same thing unfolding across the country: Democrats have outnumbered Republicans dramatically in registering new voters. Yet thousands of those new registrations are fraudulent. It may be that most of those bogus registrations will never be acted upon at the voter's booth. But the sheer volume of new registrations is making it difficult for the registrars in these states to accurately verify all of them in time to ensure a valid election.

Ms. Neff spouts the red herring that the GOP is using these stories about ACORN to suppress voter turnout. Ms. Neff, conservatives in this country have no desire to deny the vote to any United States citizen with the legitimate right to vote. What we would like to suppress are votes by dead people and Mickey Mouse.

Requiring a photo ID to vote may not be the law in every state right now -- the Democrats and groups such as ACORN have fought this tooth and nail -- but securing free and fair elections is beneficial to all Americans.

Regina Couvrette

LAS VEGAS

It goes both ways

To the editor:

It seems that ACORN, the left-leaning voter advocacy group, has got the right wing in a tizzy over alleged voter registration fraud. Daily letters to the editor want to blame ACORN for the reason their side is losing. It seems it has less to do with the economy and promoting the policies that got us into this mess and more to do with some ACORN employee who registered the Dallas Cowboys to vote in Las Vegas.

Registering the Dallas Cowboys is kind of funny -- not very creative, but kind of funny nonetheless. What I find extremely funny, however, is the people who like to use this example. Are they really concerned that the Dallas Cowboys might actually show up to vote?

ACORN pays people to register voters. The more people they register, the more money their workers make. I don't see a problem paying people to handle voter registration drives, but I do see an obvious problem with incentivizing or having quotas. But because there's not much risk of Boog E. Mann showing up at the polls, I think the right needs to calm down a little.

Now, if the Democratic Party had paid ACORN $500,000 to register voters and then rip up the Republican registrations, we might have a story.

Now that you mention it, wasn't there a group called Voters Outreach of America, back in 2004, that was paid $500,000 by the Republican National Committee to register voters? If I remember correctly (and thanks to the Internet, I do), it was run by a former head of the RNC in Arizona named Nathan Sproul of Sproul & Associates.

I wonder if Review-Journal letter writers remember that one?

Martin Elge

LAS VEGAS

Overdue, over budget

To the editor:

On Page 1B of Wednesday's Review-Journal were photos and an article about budget woes relating to the new Nevada State Museum under construction at the Springs Preserve. According to the article, the museum was originally projected to cost $35 million, but the cost has since ballooned to more than $53 million.

This is just another example in the long list of Nevada public construction projects gone awry. Why is it that projects in the private sector -- many very large ones (has anyone noticed the huge hotels here?) -- built in this valley are brought to completion on time and on budget, but it almost never happens that way in the public sector?

The Regional Justice Center, UNLV buildings, the Nevada State Museum -- it's a long list. As a taxpayer and as a practical guy, I get sick and tired of continually being advised that whatever project the government undertakes (city, county, state, federal -- all of them), it requires more money than anyone predicted, takes longer than expected, or becomes a boondoggle of some kind because someone runs off with funds or fails to account for them properly.

Do University Medical Center and the UNLV dental school come to mind as fitting into this same category? How do these kinds of things happen over and over and over? I guess the ultimate question is, why do we as taxpayers put up with it?

Paul B. Winn

LAS VEGAS