I am baffled that the Press Herald granted former U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin a platform to pollute the public discourse with self-serving and partisan misinformation about the integrity of America’s elections (“We must protect our sacred right to vote, freely and fairly,” March 13).
Poliquin leads off by stating “There’s nothing more sacred than our constitutional right to vote.” Yet Poliquin is a member of a party that is aggressively prosecuting a nationwide war against this very right. Republicans claim they are acting to protect the integrity of America’s elections, yet the factual record shows that cases of voter fraud are vanishingly rare and do not affect election outcomes.
Poliquin also frets that HR 1 and other voting reforms “will confuse and discourage voters.” I suppose it is possible that Poliquin truly believes his constituents were “confused and discouraged” when they ejected him from Congress via a ranked-choice instant runoff – in which case he is insulting his constituents’ intelligence, albeit in good faith – but the more likely explanation is simply that Poliquin is still sour at having gone from being a sitting U.S. representative to being a private citizen.
Poliquin has a First Amendment right to speak divisively and with misinformation, but your newspaper is under no obligation to provide the platform.
Henry Landis Gabel
Portland
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