Regarding the Nov. 19 article, “Sununu May Scrap Voter Law,” New Hampshire’s governor-elect wants to join other Republican officials around the country to make it harder to vote by eliminating same-day registration.
When I worked as a poll monitor at the Lebanon City Hall on Nov. 8, I saw hundreds of citizens register that day to vote. They represented all ages, races and probably religions. Some wore coats and ties, others dirty work clothes.
There were mothers with children and people with disabilities. Some were voting for the very first time. Others had only recently moved into the area.
These individuals were processed by extremely efficient Lebanon town officials, were given ballots and voted. They did not delay voting by other citizens. All was quiet and orderly. There were no challenges, and there was no evidence whatever of any impropriety. When they exited, they were given small red, white and blue stickers that said, “I voted.”
What these same-day registrants had in common was a desire to exercise their precious right to help select their government leaders. It is a right that so many Americans have fought and died for.
Elimination of same-day registration would make it more difficult or even impossible for many citizens to vote.
Sununu’s proposal is simply un-American, and he should be ashamed of himself.
Stephen DycusStrafford
Like many of your readers, I thought I’d never see something in one of Jim Newcomb’s regular letters with which I could agree. Then I saw his advice to Democrats on how to win next time, “Stop nominating corrupt, lying criminals who want to use the government to enrich themselves while stripping the American people of their constitutional rights.”
So to follow this to its logical conclusion, he’s saying if a party really wants to win, it must nominate a corrupt, lying, self-dealing candidate who is also a racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, “parts”-grabbing Islamophobe who wants to use the government to enrich himself, his family, and their 1 percent peers while stripping the American people of their constitutional rights. Did I get that right? Still seems wrong to me. We can do better, and I sure hope we will.
Jonathan A. ScottPlainfield
Would a strong, independent, confident, secure, liberated feminist stay with a man who disrespected and dishonored her over and over again by having known sexual affairs with other women? No, she would not — unless she had no self-esteem and needed him to further her own ambitions. This is not a woman to admire, nor elect president.
Jean LiepoldGrantham
Prepared to Resist
For two days after the election of Donald Trump, I was stunned. As time has passed, however, I’ve decided to get organized to resist this individual who brags about sexually assaulting women, calls Mexicans rapists and murderers, promises to mass-deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented people and create a central registry of all Muslims.
I will register as a Muslim and I will provide sanctuary in my home for any undocumented person seeking to evade forced deportation. I am prepared to disregard the “bounds of the law” to quote from President Hanlon’s letter to the Dartmouth community. Remember: Apartheid, National Socialism and Jim Crow laws were once legal but they were not moral or just. I am prepared to resist illegitimate authority.
Shawn M. DonovanLebanon
Trump Takes Aim at Hamilton
As an old theater hand, here is my view of the Hamilton/Pence brouhaha … and don’t you love that word? I do. The cast made a statement to a major political leader. In public. Yes. Just as people do all of the time.
This incredibly rude, unforgivable rant was … a call for unity. Just as Mr. Trump has been saying. Mr. Pence, an old political hand, is much less thin-skinned than Mr. Trump, I suspect.
As far as theater being a “safe and sacred space” (says Mr. Trump), no. Theater is intended to provoke, to challenge, to make people think, to make them squirm in their cushioned seats. And this reference seems odd from Mr. Trump, who rarely plays it safe and for whom little seems sacred. As for Mr. Trump’s declaration that the statement was “rude” and that the cast should “apologize” . . . well, I’ll let that irony collapse under its own weight. As someone wiser than me said recently, Mr. Trump is avid in his support of the Second Amendment but less interested in the First.
Charlie Glazer Lebanon