LET AMERICA VOTE — BUT FOR WHOM?

With Tennessee voter turnout among the worst of the 50 states and Hamilton County turnout for early voting the worst among the state’s 95 counties, any help that encourages everyone to vote — especially young people — can’t be bad. Or can it?

The Mayor’s Youth Council, in partnership with national nonprofit Let America Vote, encouraged several dozen community members to vote, instructed them how to become involved in the electoral process and explained to them why they should support less restrictive voting practices during a forum at Bessie Smith Cultural Center Wednesday night.

We believe voting is a sacred right given to Americans and believe every American should exercise that right. If young people learn that lesson when they’re teenagers, maybe they’ll be more apt to make voting a habit. If that was one of the points local young people heard the other night, kudos for the message.

But no one should think Let America Vote doesn’t have ulterior motives. It’s not a nonpartisan organization, and you don’t have to go very far to find out.

On the front page of its website, www.letamericavote.org, is a link: “We’re in Tennessee because Tennessee needs votingrights champions.” That link takes you to a page, where it tells you that “Republicans enjoy unchecked control at almost every level of government, to the great detriment of voting rights and civic participation.”

In other words, Let America Vote is a partisan organization. Period.

It goes on to say that currently “there’s little that can be done if lawmakers decided, say, to purge the voter rolls or cut back early voting” and that “the GOP takeover of Tennessee politics … was accomplished at least in part by a purposeful campaign of voter suppression.”

This probably will come as a surprise to Republican Gov. Bill Haslam and Republican legislators who have worked hard to change voter minds by touting their own merits, by offering sensible policies, and by governing fairly and humanely.

What Let America Vote suggests on its website is part outright lies and part scare tactics. But this is the group that Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke’s Youth Council brought to town to talk to young people. Berke, according to the organization, is on its Board of Advisors. So is Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia, three former advisers, speechwriters or spokesmen for former President Barack Obama, and Planned Parenthood Action Fund President Cecile Richards.

The group’s president, Jason Kander, is a former Missouri secretary of state and failed candidate for U.S. Senate who oversaw an election in the Show Me State that, according to one television station, turned voters “away at the polls because of a shortage of ballots,” a shortage that, according to a St. Louis public radio station “increased as the day went on.” Then, after he founded the voter organization, that organization opposed legislation in New Hampshire that would make it tougher for nonresidents to vote there.

And lest anyone quibble about what he and the organization did in the past, take a peek at what the organization’s political action committee (PAC) is currently doing — what it did between Feb. 2, 2017, and July 31, 2018. Its contributions of $48,000 to other committees, according to the Federal Election Commission, went to the Bredesen for Senate committee, to the U.S. Senate re-election campaigns of Democrats Jon Tester (Montana), Claire McCaskill (Missouri) and Martin Heinrich (New Mexico), to the U.S. Senate campaigns of Democrats Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona) and Jacky Rosen (Nevada), to the re-election campaign of one Democratic U.S. House member and the election of four Democratic U.S. House candidates.

In addition, its contributions went to the Iowa Democratic Party, the Maine Democratic Party, the Congressional Black Caucus PAC and Emily’s List, which says it exists to elect prochoice Democratic women.

All Democrats. No Republicans. All partisan. Not nonpartisan.

Kander, for the record, also serves as chairman of the Democratic National Committee’s Commission on Protecting American Democracy from the Trump Administration.

Let America Vote also advocates automatic voter registration (residents would become eligible to vote when they interact with specific government agencies, such as acquiring a driver’s license), and not requiring a photo identification in order to vote. To the latter proposal, we would renew our question: Why is it wrong to request a photo ID for something as sacred as voting when we must produce one to, among other things, buy alcohol, to apply for food stamps, to obtain a driver’s license, to fly on an airplane and to purchase a gun?

Both of the above ideas increase the possibility of noncitizens voting. Many say that’s the goal. We hope it’s not.

To be clear, if encouraging young people — and all eligible people — to vote was the reason for the existence of Let America Vote, we would be grateful for its presence. But its reasons to exist have more partisan purposes. And you don’t have to delve too far to learn them.