A recent letter writer who believes there is some sort of link between identity theft and voter fraud fails to take into account the obvious (“ID laws should expand to halt voter fraud,” May 28).

I’m willing to bet that most, if not all, identity thieves are not so much motivated by politics but by profit.

By that, I mean when a criminal goes to the trouble to steal your Social Security number or other information, they almost certainly are doing that to drain your bank account or get a credit card in your name – not to show up at Biddeford City Hall in November and vote for road commissioner or City Council.

That goes for the always-reliable bogeyman of illegal immigrants as well. Does any lucid person really think that a young mother totes her children from Central America risking murder, rape, death from exposure and arrest just to come to Brownfield or Biddeford or Bangor, Maine, and skew election results one way or another?

That sort of reality-deprived, thinly veiled racism harkens back to former Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster’s ridiculous claim that busloads of black people were showing up at town offices across Maine to vote illegally.

It’s probably true that passing yet another law or 10 and forcing law-abiding Americans to jump through more hoops to exercise their constitutional right to vote could curtail whatever irrelevant amount of voter fraud there is, just as passing a law mandating a 24-hour curfew would end most crime in general.

But ask yourself: Do you want to live in a country that allows ignorance and paranoia to dictate our laws?

Jeremy Smith

Old Orchard Beach

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