IN RESPONSE: Bill in Carson City would promote fraud under guise of making voting easier

Steve Sebelius’s Sunday essay on proposed voting legislation in Nevada (“There should be no more roadblocks”) should have been headlined, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Assembly Bill 321, which would make mail-in voting permanent, is nothing more than an attempt to fundamentally alter voting in this state and invite voter fraud and malfeasance.

For more than the 20 years I have lived in Nevada, voters have had the option of early voting, voting on Election Day and — in cases of Nevada residents living outside the state — absentee voting. In 2020, the Democratically controlled Legislature convened an emergency session to address and ultimately pass mail-in voting as an option solely because of the fears of COVID-19.

At no time during that emergency session did I hear anyone discuss other voting alternatives such as setting aside voting times for the elderly and others most susceptible to COVID-19 (you know, the way the supermarkets figured when they set aside early morning shopping hours just for the elderly).

Moreover, I never heard any discussion regarding the expense of sending out mail-in votes to everyone (dead or alive, living in Nevada or elsewhere) listed on the voter rolls.

Instead, as Mr. Sebelius now contends in support of AB321, “Every single eligible voter should register and cast a ballot in every election. The state’s laws should make it as easy as possible for every one of those voters to do that.” But he patently misses the mark on voting as both a right and a privilege in Nevada and the United States.

Of course every eligible voter should, after becoming educated on the candidates and/or issues, vote in every election. That is the civic responsibility of every legal citizen of Nevada and the United States. Yet that responsibility requires effort and a desire to exercise that right and privilege in this country that so many have fought and died to safeguard and protect.

AB321 is just another step toward inviting voter fraud under the guise of making voting easier. Freedom, and the responsibility of safeguarding those freedoms as defined in the Nevada and United States constitutions, is not supposed to be easy. Being an active, eligible citizen-voter of Nevada and the United States requires work and diligence. Tell your state representatives to vote no on AB321.

Mark S. Karris, an attorney, writes from Las Vegas.