Make vote count
To the editor:
What’s all the buzz about ranked-choice voting?
In the last presidential primary, my pick dropped out of the race after I’d mailed in my ballot. That meant my vote, by no fault of my own, was useless! That happened to one in four voters in Washington’s 2020 Democratic primary.
Ranked-choice voting (RCV) is a simple improvement to the way we vote. Vote for candidates in the order you prefer: 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, and so on. If your favorite can’t win, your vote counts for your next choice.
If we had RCV in 2020, my second or third choice could have counted, and I wouldn’t have been punished for mailing in my vote early.
Seattle just voted to adopt RCV and 50 other cities and counties in the U.S. will be using RCV as well. Two states — Alaska and Maine — already use it for both state and federal elections. It’s a simple reform that’s easy to use. Our Washington legislators have considered RCV bills but haven’t passed one. It is time they do.
Please email your representatives and ask them to pass House Bill 1592, which would give all voters a voice in our presidential primaries.
Joan Rynearson
Bainbridge
Teachers work hard
To the editor:
I’m a 2020 graduate of Bainbridge High School. I’m studying Criminal Justice at Regis University, and I would like to thank all of my teachers and mentors at Woodward and BHS. It’s been an incredibly difficult few years, but the practical knowledge and resilience that I learned from my teachers and coaches have stayed with me.
Thanks to the foundation that I learned at Bainbridge, I’ve had wonderful opportunities open up. None of this would’ve been possible without the teachers who believed in and supported me. I never felt like a smart kid, but all it takes is for one person to believe in you and give you a chance. Small acts of kindness and encouragement mean the world when you’re the new kid with dyslexia who hates math.
Madeline Swietlik
Ocean City, N.J.
Bleeding Hartmanns
To the editor:
The question of whether society is founded upon conflict or cooperation hangs tough, with progressive icon Thom Hartmann sitting pretty in Baby-Boomer hypocrisy. Carroll Quigley insists that “democracy” and gun control are mutually exclusive, likewise vaccine mandates and “My body/My choice!”
Hartmann’s “Me”generation is messed up-e.g. from Charles Manson, to Jim Jones, to the “Love Israel” commune (with their corny 12-step “recovery movement” of the late 1980’s topping it off) -being straight-up dupes of cults, their bankrupt idealism a derelict hit-parade of limp-wristed, gushy dweebs.
Hartmann disses de Tocqueville as a played-out aristocrat, something that de Tocqueville well understood. An original genius, like all boomers, Hartmann then deduces that “people are tribal,” underscored by de Tocqueville in the “Tanner memoirs.” De Tocqueville’s insight into freedom’s conflict with equality rings true, where Hartmann wallows in a dream-land of hamstrung Harrison Bergerons.
We are all equally free, but not free to be equal. Equality is costly: blinking red on the back end of our social security cards is our bar-code of involuntary servitude to Quigley’s “international banking fraternity,” spearheaded by the Rothschilds, and their totalitarian CBDC “administrative state.” This globalist banking cartel could have easily stopped World War II, suspending gold transfers and foreign exchanges through their bank of international settlements—is there an assault-rifle ban there?
Technocrat Hartmann’s mantra “follow the science” falls flat with WTC7- as NIST’s “thermal expansion” theory negates those pesky shear studs, a practical impossibly. Boomers are twinkle-toed commie bastards who sold the nation short for a quick-fix pack of lies, fancying the claptrap of petty gurus over hard truths.
Equality is not fairness, but a nonentity. Fairness instigates a society of property and family, not communism and trannies. Larry McDonald’s four boxes of liberty are the cornerstones of a just society, ammunition box included.
Pete Lindall
Bainbridge
