Re: The Biggest Scam of All

Published in the Towns County Herald September 9, 2026 

Dear Editor,

Starting a tit-for-tat “Dear Editor” string is unlikely to change opinions, but in the case of the letter last week “The Biggest Scam of All” (Towns County Herald, Sept. 2, 2026) a response is required.

In it, the writer makes salacious claims about Democratic Party positions on voting, apparently because he disagrees with a prior letter’s use of the phrase “voter suppression measures in the controversial Save Act.”  Whether or not you disagree with that description is inconsequential to the need to correct mischaracterizations that follow in the rest of the letter.

First, I would point out the misnamed SAVE America Act is opposed by a bipartisan collection of Senators.  Hence it has been bottled up without sufficient votes for passage.  The opposition to it is based on its shortcomings, not some conspiratorial desire to allow illegal voting.  Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) calls its one-size-fits-all requirements federal overreach which will disenfranchise American citizens in remote areas of her state.  Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) opposes it on constitutional grounds because it nationalizes election administration, long a state responsibility.  Neither Republicans nor the Democrats opposing the SAVE America Act are supportive of illegal voting by ineligible voters and undocumented aliens.

The Letter From Sept. 2

Opposition to the bill is substantive and proper.  The bill is so vague on important points and so poorly drafted it is guaranteed to be challenged in court and probably thrown out.  For that reason, if not others, it is more about political messaging rather than election integrity and should be more properly named: “The Election Rights Attorney’s Full Employment Act” and set aside.

The bill invents a problem to which it proposes to be the solution.  Undocumented aliens are already forbidden to register and vote, convicted felons are already forbidden to register and vote, voter rolls are regularly purged to remove dead or inactive voters.  As every voter knows, voter ID is the standard in Georgia.  These steps all occur at the state level.  So, what is the SAVE Act doing?

When Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) made the statement quoted in the letter, he was speaking of American citizens being disenfranchised.  He was talking about you and me and anyone else who changes their name, moves, loses their identification, gets married, turns 18...  These are matters that are currently handled by the states with little inconvenience to voters.

Of course, the real issue the letter writer distracts from is warning voters against a sham voter registration mailer from Ready to Register.  Please don’t fall for Ready to Register’s attempt to harvest your personal and contact information.  Ready to Register isn’t interested in your right to vote.  It is building a database of voters for its own commercial and political use.

Keep your voting information safe.  If you are worried about your registration status go to Georgia’s My Voter Page at https://mvp.sos.ga.gov/s/.  You only need to enter your first initial, last name, date of birth and county of residence to find out if you are registered, review your voting history, check on your voting location, find the status of an absentee ballot request, or update your registration.

David W. Plunkett
Young Harris, GA