By Trish Nelson, Iowa City
Why would any American politician choose to shorten the voting period in any state? Why would the Republican Party want a law limiting ballot drop boxes to one per county? Why prevent county auditors from mailing ballot requests to everyone? Why prevent your ballot being mailed to you until mid-October? These and more burdensome rules are now the law in Iowa. Marianette Miller-Meeks supports that decision based on recent statements. She is also fundraising on that law which means she is campaigning for 2022 in full support of voter disenfranchisement.
The new Iowa law also shortens the early voting period from 29 days to 20, and polls will close one hour earlier on Election Day at 8 p.m. The law reduces the authority of local auditors and places nonsensical restrictions on who can deliver an absentee ballot, with criminal penalties attached.
Reducing voting hours and adding restrictions that create obstacles to voting seems like going backward toward the Jim Crow era of our country, the opposite of a “modernized“ election law as Miller-Meeks claimed recently.
Americans gave their lives for the right to vote. Miller-Meeks is in office because of six votes. There were enough wrongly discarded, uncounted ballots in the 2020 2nd District Congressional election to have possibly changed the outcome. Her campaign conveniently opposed a full recount.
Miller-Meeks is not on the side of Democracy, election integrity or the people of the 2nd District.
