In a Jan. 7 Sun Journal article, Matt Leonard seems to imply that election officials are responsible for our electorally-divided population.
He said “… our election officials should be terrified because then they won’t have an ability to continue to divide us.” If he is saying that the 2020 presidential election was determined by illegal voting or ballot counting, there are 60 failed appeals on the part of the Trump supporters to discount this theory. Two appeals were sent to the U.S. Supreme Court, and they were rejected out of hand. Remember that three of the current judges on the court are Trump appointees.
Let us put the onus somewhere else for our frustration. Perhaps Mr. Leonard should look at the volumes of misinformation emanating from a host of conspiracy-theory media outlets. One well-known outlet had to publicly retract its claims of illegal voting machines after being threatened with a defamation suit by the firm providing the machines to many jurisdictions around the nation.
No, I don’t think the source of our frustration is division caused by election officials. We should all know by now how Georgia election officials, all of them Republicans, stood by their work after three recounts of the vote in that state. They did not back down when pressure was exerted directly by Mr. Trump to find 11,780 votes. Our frustration will be assuaged when the conspiracy theory outlets are confronted for disseminating their lunatic misinformation.
Denis Fortier, Lewiston
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