Mark Weinreb: Questioning election results undermines democracy

To The Daily Sun,

Now that the 2020 presidential election is over with Joe Biden as the president elect, it is time that this newspaper, The Daily Sun, re-examines the letters that it receives and avoids printing letters that have no basis in truth or based on false conspiracy theories. Specifically, I am referring to the letter by Mr. McGee in the Nov. 13 edition.

Joe Biden won the presidential election by getting over 270 state electoral college votes in this past Nov. 3, election. Even us liberals who did not want to believe that Donald Trump could win the 2016 election, still agreed with Hillary Clinton when she conceded the election to Donald Trump that same night, even though the vote totals in some states were a lot closer than they were in this election, and the electoral counts for each candidate are the same, Trump received 306 in 2016, Biden received 306 in this election.

Mr. McGee, the reason why Florida was able to finish its vote count sooner than the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia was that Republican state legislatures did not allow some states to count mail-in votes until election day. Meanwhile, Florida was able to start counting as soon as the votes were mailed in. As far as who was counting the votes in these swing states, most were Republican state held officials. And if the election were truly “fixed”, why would Democrats “ allow” their own candidates to lose congressional seats, and not outright "win the Senate. The contests were on the same ballot.

Saying that President Trump “won the election” is a false conspiracy theory. This would be similar to me writing a letter stating that because Martians did not want American democracy to prevail throughout the earth, they came in and planted probes into Donald Trump’s brain converting him from a Democratic businessman (he use to be pro-choice and in favor of LGBTQ+ rights) to a Republican politician.

Even though I believe in free speech and everyone has the right to type or say in public these theories, the printing and legitimatizing of these conspiracy theories, by both sides, in our Laconia Daily Sun, damages our democratic institutions, and this newspaper’s reputation. If Mr. McGee wants to express these “ideas,” I am sure there are plenty of right-wing media sites and newspapers (The Weirs Times comes to mind) willing to fill up their opinion papers with this garbage.

Congratulations and good luck to Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris and God Bless the United States.

Mark Weinreb

Laconia