Editor:

In his “Your Say” column of Oct.16 (“Voter ID necessary for sound elections”), John Jamieson based his case for voter ID on a series of false reports of voter fraud. In fact, his evidence is quoted nearly verbatim from a viral blog that has been making the rounds of the Internet. That blog has been debunked on nearly every fact-checking and fraud detection site on the web.

Jamieson states that President Obama lost every state that has voter ID laws. Yet a simple check of state results shows that Obama won four of the 11 states that had such laws at the time of the election.

Jamieson also quotes the blogger that in 21 districts in Wood County, Ohio, Obama received 100 percent of the vote. The actual results are posted on the Wood County election board’s website. Obama did not receive 100 percent in any of the districts in the county and in fact got 51.21 percent of the vote in the county as a whole. Terry Burton, director of the Wood County Board of Elections states that no precinct officials were removed during election day, contrary to Jamieson and the blogger’s claims.   

As to the claim that 106,258 people voted in Wood County in the 2012 election, the records from the election board show that 63,948 votes were actually cast in the county, which has around 99,000 eligible voters.

The other statements in Jamieson’s column can be checked at factcheck.org. You will find all of them to be false and this supported by abundant documentation.

Bill Shear

Farmville