To the editor:

Among the many ill-conceived and dangerous actions taken by Donald Trump during the past decade, perhaps the most threatening to our nation’s 250-year-old democracy is his constant refrain that our elections are corrupt and that results cannot be trusted. Trump and his election denying minions have repeated these lies so often it appears many Americans have accepted them as fact and believe we have a real problem. Thus, Trump’s “Save America Act,” a misnomer if ever there was one. Elections are, always have been, and should remain the purview of state and local governments where they are fairly administered by honest folk like most of us.

If you have any doubt about the integrity of our process here in Douglas County, take County Clerk Jamie Shew’s election worker training and work the polls. I did so a few years back. If I ever had any doubts about the process, they were definitively dispelled. Shew and his staff take every aspect of this vital task seriously — voting is a sacred right, and you can be confident it is treated as such by our election officials and volunteer workers.

I once told a friend that the last time Kansas experienced widespread voter fraud or election theft was in the 1850s when hundreds of illegal votes were cast and “Border Ruffians” took over polling places and threatened legitimate would-be voters with violence. An overstatement, perhaps, but we must not allow Trump’s masked stormtroopers or any other federal agents to employ similar tactics at polling places anywhere in America this November.

Virgil W. Dean,

Lawrence