Step Up, Protect Vote

 

To the Editor: 

We should all thank Tim Walz for asking the one, all-important question of the Republican candidate for vice president in last Tuesday’s debate.

The background to his question is clear. Donald Trump refuses to accept the facts of the American voters' decision in 2020. His unending, unsupported claims about the 2020 election being “rigged” have come to nothing.

Trump’s fanciful contention and dangerous actions have been rejected in over 60 court cases, physically repulsed through the turning aside of a radical insurrection at our nation’s Capitol, and by the constitutionally sanctioned action of his own vice president, the good Christian and former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

But still Donald Trump blusters on. He declares almost daily he didn’t lose the election. Accepting his idea of a “rigged” election means accepting an authority beyond our votes to decide the outcome of an election. Make no mistake, in doing so he is erasing the sanctity of the vote, all votes, yours as well as mine.

So Tim Walz was required to ask JD Vance a simple, necessary, straight-forward question: “Did he (Trump) lose the 2020 election?”

We all have the responsibility, individual voters and the news media covering the election, to ask ourselves and every candidate for office in 2024, local, state and national, this direct, not to be dodged, not to be pushed aside, question.

Regardless of party affiliation, this question and an honest answer should be the first and foremost guide to how we vote in 2024. A JD Vance type “damning non-answer” puts our vote and democracy at serious risk.

No one leader, no faction of a political party, no promise, false or true, should be allowed to threaten our vote. At this time in America’s history, we need to step up and protect the foundation of our republic, the vote. Just as we did in 2020.

— Gary Daily