Dear Editor:

We are familiar with the NRA’s central argument against gun control legislation: any abridgment of a right can lead us down the road to a total ban. That is, once a right becomes conditional, it is on its way to becoming a privilege and thus revocable.

So it is with our right to vote and elect a representative government. The so-called SAVE act is a significant curtailment of our voting rights. Among the provisions, the bill requires individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, eliminates online and mail-in voter registration and mandates that states verify voter rolls against federal databases.

The state of Maine, as with all other states, employs robust election security measures to ensure the integrity of the election process. I trust implicitly our local election clerks and poll workers to perform their tasks with integrity and fidelity. Their efforts in this regard have delivered, election after election, credible and reliable election results with the occurrence of fraud being vanishingly small.

By contrast, President Trump has repeatedly lied about voter fraud, incited a violent insurrection on January 6, 2021, conspired to interfere with the 2020 election with fake electors to the Electoral College, filed meritless and frivolous lawsuits contesting the 2020 election and falsely accused election workers of fraud resulting in death threats and harassment against them by his followers. The list goes on but I, for one, doubt that Mr. Trump is capable of ensuring the integrity of any election process.

The act is unlikely to pass constitutional muster as our sovereign states are specifically empowered to run their elections, not the federal government. One might also recall that a similar proposal on the Maine ballot last year lost by a wide margin.

It leaves me to wonder if Senator Collins, in her support of the SAVE Act, had ever read our nation’s constitution or is acting in good faith in representing her constitutions. Please join me in calling for Senator Collins to withdraw her support of this bill that is so contrary to our American values.

Fred W. Nehring

Boothbay