For more than a year, our state, and indeed the world, has been fighting against a pandemic in a way that has not been seen in over a century. This time, we have the benefit of countless experienced and professional medical personnel to guide us through it. Doctors, nurses, EMS workers, custodial staff, and many more employees throughout the health-care enterprise have worked day and night throughout this pandemic, and we owe them a debt of gratitude for their service to our communities. 

For many of us, the question of how we can further show our support for transitioning out of this pandemic has been a big question. First, there are a few preventive items I wanted to share. Everyone who is comfortable doing so can get vaccinated to help reach herd immunity. For those people who still have reservations about the vaccine being on an emergency-use authorization, I get that too, and do not think the state has the authority to mandate vaccinations. Both you and I can also continue to follow the safety protocols lined out by the Centers for Disease Control, including social distancing, and using lots of hand sanitizer. This is the best thing we can do for our health-care heroes, keeping the COVID-19 positivity rate down and reducing the burden on our health-care system. 

A second consideration is blood donation. New York has never had a great record for blood donation, but due to the pandemic, blood shortages have reached an all-time high. Organizations like the American Red Cross help to facilitate blood donations, so if you are particularly inclined, it would be a commendable way to support our health-care workers. I can tell you from personal experience that blood donation is smooth and efficient, thanks to the hard-working health-care professionals who facilitate it. 

Finally, as part of an ongoing initiative to help revitalize local economies, I’d recommend shopping at and supporting local institutions and businesses and partnering with them to show support for our health-care heroes. Part of showing our gratitude comes from our commitment to our localities and neighbors, which can be in the form of financial support and neighborly kindness. If we take some of these steps on for ourselves, I believe we’ll see a rapid turnaround for our community and will have properly honored the sacrifices made by our health-care heroes.

As the pandemic ends and we adjust to the coming summer, the way we transition can greatly ease the burden on our health-care system and the dedicated people who have served our communities. For each of these hometown heroes, please thank and recognize their efforts with the gratitude we all feel. And we also must ensure that the hard work they put in was not in vain as we begin to enjoy the post-pandemic life. Let’s stay vigilant and take responsibility to keep pace with the fight against this virus, and not let each other down.            

Robert Smullen is the Republican representative of the 118th New York Assembly District, which encompasses Hamilton and Fulton counties as well as parts of Herkimer, Oneida, and St. Lawrence counties.

There is a fight going on over the heart of our democracy, and I worry that democracy is losing. Over the last few months, several states have moved decisively to make it harder for their citizens to vote, and more are on tap. It’s hard to tell yet whether this is just a blip or an actual reversal of America’s long trend of expanding voting access. Either way, it’s cause for attention.

 The earliest moves this year came in Iowa and Georgia, which made absentee voting harder and shifted some control over election processes from elections officials to partisan politicians themselves. Florida recently cut back on drop boxes and ratcheted up ID requirements for requesting an absentee ballot. Texas’s legislature is moving forward with a bill that would hand power to partisan poll watchers, bar elections officials from mailing out absentee-ballot applications, and impose other limits. Ohio legislators want to limit drop boxes and reduce early in-person voting. Republican legislatures in Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming have enacted restrictions, as well.

 Over the long course of American history, we have tended to move the opposite direction: toward expanding people’s ability to vote. Indeed, significant parts of our history revolved around who should be able to vote, since politicians always want to tilt the field in their favor. Originally, of course, the franchise was limited to white men with property. Then, over time, white men without property, Black men, women, Native Americans, non-English speakers, and citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 won the right to cast ballots.

 To be sure, there are still plenty of people who are barred from voting by state laws. Some states don’t let convicted felons vote; many states deny the vote to people with psychiatric disabilities — and sometimes, poll workers impose their own competency standards, regardless of what the law says. Most states impose a residency requirement —often, you must have lived there at least 30 days — and though all states allow homeless people to vote, sometimes they have trouble meeting the registration requirements.

 These days, the battles tend to revolve less explicitly around who should be able to vote and more around ease of voting. There is a strong argument to be made that this is just a different way of restricting the vote. Democrats made effective use of absentee ballots in the 2020 elections, for instance, so Republican legislatures have imposed limits on their use for next time — though there are states, like Florida, where absentees were a prime GOP electoral tool in earlier elections.

In general, voting-rights advocates argue that making voting harder means that people who have historically turned out in smaller percentages will once again be at a disadvantage. Many people — over the course of a long career in politics, I’ve seen this first-hand — are intimidated by the voting process. That includes showing up at a precinct, passing through a gauntlet of campaign signs and people with handouts, getting checked in, facing the prospect that they’ll be humiliated by being turned away. Without encouragement, they opt not to show up at all. There are politicians who know this and take advantage of it.

 By now, my view on this ought to be obvious. As a democracy, the United States is stronger when as many people as possible can vote and the electorate reflects the actual makeup of the population. This has two beneficial effects: it ensures that our elected representatives reflect who we are; and it helps Americans not only feel a stake in the system but believe that their voices are represented in the corridors of power. The opposite is also true. When people feel that efforts are being made to deny their participation, they write off the process and begin looking for other ways to affect politics and policy, including taking to the streets or developing sympathy for more authoritarian approaches to governing. 

 It is too early to say how this year’s voting-restriction laws will turn out; many of them will likely end up in court. But even if the urge to limit voting is hardly new, it’s dismaying that, well over two centuries since our founding, it remains so pervasive.        

Lee Hamilton, 90, is a senior advisor for the Indiana University (IU) Center on Representative Government, distinguished scholar at IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years (1965-1999), representing a district in south central Indiana.