Beating a Dead Horse?
To the Editor:
Reading the letter by Hanna Hoffman, Jan. 26, brings to mind the fictional character Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha. This fanciful character fights the imaginary foe. His active imagination causes him to believe that everyday objects like windmills are actually giants that he must destroy.
The following appears to be some of Ms. Hoffman’s windmills:
1. Ms. Hoffman calls the Russian information specious; however, the Republican led Senate reported in its August of 2020 review that Russia used Republican political operative, Paul Manafort and Wikileaks’ website to try and help Donald Trump win the 2016 election.
2. Ms. Hoffman accuses the voting machines of being “bedeviled” by non-transparent algorithms; however, there is no secret vote-flipping algorithm in the non-partisan Dominion machines. Third-party test labs, chosen by the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, perform complete source-code reviews on every federally certified system.
3. She assumes the states didn’t realize or plan for large numbers of mail-in ballots; however, they knew way in advance that because of the pandemic and in spite of Trump’s plans to put up roadblocks to mail-in ballots, that many voters would vote by mail.
4. She questions the integrity of hard-working, dedicated election workers in the states’ electoral process; however, historically, recounts typically move only as many as a few hundred votes. In the key 2020 battleground states, the votes for Biden were higher than 10,000; therefore, hoping for recounts to dramatically change the results were little to none. The states had plenty of time to recount the votes three times. The findings were sent to the courts and no fraud was found. The 61 Trump lawsuits were tossed out by mostly Republican judges.
Ms. Hoffman’s assumptions have been disproven many times over. This rhetoric continues to sew doubt in the minds of those who have been radicalized by the big lie of voter fraud.
Exposure to truth is the way forward. “Beating a dead horse” is not a viable or productive path to moving forward.
Patty Reid
La Grange