National voter I.D. law needed
The Alabama senatorial election is over; the elephant is soaking its bruised trunk and the donkey is braying.
During that election, Roy Moore was called unfit and Doug Jones too liberal; after considering all that was said, the voters had their say and Jones was elected to the U.S. Senate and his being seated will be, and that is as it should be.
There were two wrongs, concerning the election: First, before the election, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, hinted that if Moore were elected, the Senate would be faced with the duty to declare Moore unfit to serve and refuse to seat him. Second: Weak voter I.D. laws in Alabama raised the concern of the possibility that illegal votes were cast.
It is sad that the Senate has the power to pick and choose which senator-elect it will accept, the power to override the will of the voters of any state; and just as sad, there is no national voter I.D. law which would prevent illegal votes from being cast in any election.
Those two sad features of the election process can be remedied by members of Congress showing moral fiber and passing legislation to divest itself of its power to nullify the vote of the people and a national voter I.D. law, which would prevent illegal voting in any election.
BILL SMITH, STOCKBRIDGE
Trump not really responsible for ISIS defeat
Ross Douthat’s column “To his credit, Trump won war against Islamic State,” Opinion, Dec. 19, gives credit to President Trump for the defeat of the Islamic State. If Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton had been elected in 2016, the Islamic State defeat would still have been successful because it was already on its way by January 2017. Maybe we should wait until the second year before giving much weight to the success or failure of any presidency.
JACK ARTHURTON, ROSWELL
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