I grew up in the deep South, in Georgia – the only state then where the voting age was 18. My senior year in high school, our civics teacher took all of the 18-year-olds to the courthouse to register to vote.

The room we were in had a fence down the middle, and blacks entered by another door and tried to register on the other side of the fence. I filled out a form and was registered. I watched as blacks were asked to read and explain parts of the Constitution. They were then told that they had not passed the test and could not register.

I felt ashamed of my government that day.

I was appalled and saddened by this display of discrimination and knew it was not right. Though the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, and things improved, there is still inequality in the United States.

I am constantly surprised as people today do not stand up for civil rights. I would challenge everyone to speak up for people of color. Yes, even today, people are denied the right to vote in this country. We should let our members of Congress know that we care about this.

The U.S. Postal Service has considered closing mail-processing centers, leaving two centers open in Washington: in Seattle and Spokane. Those closures will effectively eliminate overnight mail service. The USPS has also proposed ending Saturday mail service.

Those proposed actions by the USPS will require voters to mail their ballots at least four days prior to any election. Much can happen during the four days prior to an election.

Timely delivery will still be dependent on the USPS. This does not even address whether absentee voters out of state or in the military will be able to have their ballots delivered in a timely manner.

With 100 percent mail-in balloting there is no opportunity for voters to cast their ballots at the polls the day of the election. Senate Bill 5291 would also have an adverse impact on levy elections not held in November which require a specific number of ballots to validate an election results.

There have been many attempts across the country to disenfranchise voters. Washington state does not need to jump onto the bandwagon to make it more difficult for voters to exercise their voting rights. I am willing to wait the additional time necessary to certify the results of any election.

On Saturday, we learned that on Jan. 12, 1915, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a constitutional amendment allowing women to vote. The House was Democrat, as was the Senate.

In 1920, a constitutional amendment adopted by the House gave women the vote. The House was Republican, as was the Senate.

Funny, isn’t it, how Republicans are shamelessly attacked and lambasted as women haters? The White House is held by the political party waging war on women. Barack Obama just appointed or selected nothing but white men to run our current administration, while nearly every cabinet woman in the current administration has left or run out under this president and his white-male staff.

Just before the Soviet Union collapsed, my uncle came to visit us from Latvia. An election took place during his visit. I was tired after a day’s work; I didn’t feel like going to vote. Anyway, it was a minor, off-year election. When I told my uncle, he exclaimed, “You can’t not vote!” He eagerly accepted my invitation to come along. Of course, they wouldn’t let him go into the voting booth with me. But he got to see how a free people uphold democracy. Just the fact that he was allowed into the school gym to watch was a big deal to him.

It’s more than twenty years since Latvia regained its freedom. I’m sure that during the first heady days of freedom everyone voted. I wonder if, in the years since, they’ve become as complacent as we have.

Four years ago, I went to my polling place in a local school auditorium. The room was packed with citizens exercising their franchise in person. We all had to wait in line a while, but no one complained. Republican, Democrat, Independent – we were all united by our participation in the democratic process.

How have we so easily abandoned a 400-year-old tradition of voting in person? The polling place is the sanctuary of democracy.  We might as well stay at home to worship God instead of going to church. And why not? Is nothing lost by staying at home and watching a worship service on the tube? Nothing more than we lose by eliminating the polls.

What may have been the best they could do in Colonial days gives disproportional weight to the voters in small states by as much as 4 to 1. Voters in swing states barraged by media blitzkriegs of ads and automated phone calls willingly sell their votes in exchange for government projects and grants.

Election campaigns are so expensive that candidates sell their souls to win elections. Many voters don’t believe their vote counts, let alone makes a difference. The polls are hardly closed on the East Coast before the networks have named a winner.

It’s time for a change. We need a constitutional amendment to dump the Electoral College and elect the president by popular vote. Just think of it. We would have a system with just good honest “votes” that count. No red states, blue states or swing states. Your vote would actually count toward the total your candidate receives and the candidate with the majority of the total votes cast would win.

Now if it were only that easy to solve the problem of campaign financing and the buying and selling of politicians by lobbyists and other groups. There are many good reasons to contribute to the party and representatives of your choice, but in today’s world of massive campaign war chests, the average voter’s donation is lost and probably wasted.

I’m sure that the Pierce County Auditor’s Office does as good a job as any in handling and counting mail-in ballots. But Pierce County has only 11 percent of the registered voters in the state of Washington, so it hardly seems that Auditor Julie Anderson could speak for the efforts in other counties.

King County, with 28 percent of the registered voters in the state, rejected nearly 20,000 or 2.6 percent of the ballots received in 2010. Remove the late ballots and rejection is still high at 1.7 percent, with mostly signature-related issues at the forefront.

As to the naive presumption that manual signature verification is 100 percent accurate, I’d like to point out that the banking industry abandoned manual signature verification more than 20 years ago. With the advent of the inkjet printer and scanning technology, it is just too easy to forge a signature.

So to those who say there are few or no reported acts of fraud in the mail-in voting process, I’d like to ask them to prove it. I’ve heard it is nearly impossible to prove a negative.

The next secretary of sate must have the knowledge and heft of experience to run one of the nation’s most highly regarded elections offices. She also must win the trust of all Washingtonians, regardless of party affiliation, that in a close call, politics won’t come into play.

Wyman has a 21-year record of nonpartisanship, experience and professionalism. As Thurston County auditor, she has inspired confidence in both Democrats and Republicans – winning her last election with a whopping 67 percent.

Present and former county auditors know the office best. Sixty-six of them – including 24 Democrats – endorse and support Wyman. She is the candidate who will clearly follow in a long tradition of Washington secretaries of state looking to serve the best interests of voters.

Please join me in voting for Kim Wyman for evenhanded competence and integrity in the office of secretary of state.

(Reed is the current secretary of state.)

I disagree with the writer for several reasons. Many people have neither the interest nor time to research and learn about the candidates and issues, so resorting to a knowledgeable source for guidance other than the negative commercial television political ads is of benefit to our state and country.

It’s too bad that this is the reality, but frankly most people are so taken up with just making ends meet that if they choose to benefit from intelligent, knowledgeable (in my opinion), unbiased editors whose primary job is to inform the citizenry, then I say hooray!

In a perfect world, all voters would know the issues and their candidates, but if they don’t then more power to the TNT for helping.

By the way, The News Tribune has a wonderful online voter guide which outlines candidates and the pros and cons of ballot measures – with no endorsements. Make use of it.

I was dismayed when Pierce County joined the rest of the state for voting by mail. I was assured by my legislator that it was more cost-effective and efficient. But at what cost to democracy? The front-page article only confirms my fear and dismay.

I have always enjoyed going to the polls. My parents raised me to see it as a privilege and an exciting thing to do. I miss it. I voted by mail for the first time a few months ago only to get a letter telling me my ballot would not be counted because my signature did not match the one on file. I had time to “make it right” by submitting a form with another signature, but I have no confidence that it was counted and, of course, it surely was more expensive corresponding back and forth at least four times.

I have voted in Pierce County for 35 years and have never been questioned about my identity, though I knew I had a registration card to prove who I was if need be. Now I wonder why I even have one. The article states that “voting in person is more reliable” and that “voting by mail suggests an overall failure rate of as much as 21 percent.”

That is a frightening thing. I do not support voting by mail and have no confidence in the system as it exists here in Pierce County.