John Rodgers: Letters continue to perpetuate questions about last election

To The Daily Sun,

I reluctantly respond to Peter Kirk of Gilford because it’s hard to conduct discourse when facts take a back seat and the obvious somehow eludes ascertainment.

In his original letter, which I responded to, he wrote that when he first voted as a new U.S. citizen in 2005, he “could have given any name on the voting rolls” because “no proof of identity was required at the time.” Outlandish as that hypothetical is — I guess I could go in and say Doug Cooper on Maple Lane — it clearly implies that the process was corruptible 16 years ago.

Later, Mr. Kirk writes, “There are already serious questions about our last election.”

I addressed both of those assertions in my letter and showed that they epitomize a broader assault on democracy. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Kirk’s reply is the typical reply we’ve been seeing for more than four years now: You didn’t understand, now look over here! In the first line of his reply, he wonders where I got the impression that he questioned the validity of the last election. In his second sentence, he suggests that I am “overly sensitive to any questions about that vote.”

Alright, let’s do a logic exercise: If he never questioned the validity of the vote, how could I be sensitive to his questions about that vote? Further, if he writes that there are “serious questions” in his original letter, dropping that allusion to all those “questions,” which the reader is left to ponder (what “questions”?), then hasn’t he questioned the outcome? If in response to the local school board vote, I say to someone, “Hey, there are some serious questions about that vote?,” what is it that I’m implying? That the vote was legitimate?

Lastly, how fitting that Mr. Kirk expresses being aggrieved for having his integrity challenged, when his first letter implied that the voting process was and is ripe for corruption, failing to mention all the Americans who have volunteered at the polls, voted faithfully, helped register the less privileged and encouraged a more accessible voting process, a process that was declared secure by the government and reputable journalistic institutions. Really, Mr. Kirk should consider himself a witness to the success of our vital voting process, especially during this last treacherous assault, when the real enemy was Donald Trump and all those whom sought to tear down our democracy with baseless claims (a.k.a. “questions”) just like the ones Mr. Kirk and others further in these pages.

John Rodgers

Moultonborough