Candidates should compete on ideas, not on how effectively they block their opponents' voters from casting ballots.
Normally, in a democracy, this goes without saying. Yet it's not so obvious in the United States anymore.
From Florida to North Dakota, elected officials seem to increasingly view elections not as a way to tabulate public preferences, but rather as a tool for forcing their own preferences upon the public.
They've done this by introducing hundreds of measures making it harder for citizens to vote, using as an excuse the imagined scourge of voter fraud. Such policies include restrictions on voter registration, cuts to early-voting hours, closed polling locations in minority neighborhoods and voter-roll purges.