In a well-known Monty Python skit, set in the Middle Ages, a man who is about to be carted off to a cemetery objects, “I’m not dead yet!” The man carrying him admonishes, “You will be soon … you’ll be stone dead in a moment.” Despite the first man’s continued protestations and his assurance that, “I’m getting better!” He is ultimately knocked unconscious and carted off.

While this scene was intended to make us laugh, a similar but much more serious debate is playing out over voting rights. Contrary to record voting levels and evidence that voting rules, like voter ID, have minimal impact on turnout, Democrats are warning that our democracy is dead unless Congress passes their massive 700-plus-page voting bill that would rewrite all 50 states’ voting laws. A Freudian slip by the president even implied that if Democrats don’t get their way, they may question the validity of the 2022 elections.

This doomsday worldview is well represented on these pages. A recent editorial (“Our View: Susan Collins lets us down on voting rights,” Jan. 23) asserted that our democracy has reached a “dangerous moment,” citing 34 voting laws passed last year. Yet these 34 laws include innocuous changes such as a Utah bill, passed nearly unanimously, to ensure deceased voters don’t receive ballots.

Democracy is not dead yet – far from it. Sen. Susan Collins made the right call by standing up to those who seek to club it and cart it off for their own partisan advantage.