Letters: Readers discuss unequal voting machines, Bloomberg’s ignorance and ReStart
Use one type
A Feb. 24 news story questioned the reliability of ballot-marking devices — voting machines that use a touchscreen or other assistive devices such as keyboards or audio signals to generate a paper ballot. (4A, “Reliability of pricey new voting machines questioned”)
It mentioned that the original purpose of these devices was to make voting accessible for people with disabilities. However, requiring people with disabilities such as blindness to use separate machines would lead to a segregated voting system, contrary to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision and potentially compromising our right to cast a secret ballot.
There is no evidence that a ballot-marking device has been hacked during an election, and many of the issues with calibrating the machines could be resolved by better training. If all voters were to use ballot-marking machines, poll workers would know how to operate them, providing everyone with an equal voting experience. By contrast, 33% of blind voters who responded to a recent National Federation of the Blind survey reported that poll workers had problems setting up and operating separate ballot-marking devices.
- Daniel Garcia, President, Kansas City Chapter, National Federation of the Blind, Kansas City
Farmers insulted
An open letter to Michael Bloomberg:
I rarely speak about politics, but when I heard you said in 2016, “I could teach anybody ... to be a farmer,” it stirred a fire within me.
Being a farmer takes a great talent and a special breed of person. As a presidential candidate, I would expect better from you. As the wife of a farmer, I am appalled that you would speak about an issue without researching it. If you can’t take time to know your subject matter before opening your mouth, I wouldn’t want you to be our president. I couldn’t trust you to execute the laws of the land — not to mention the nightmares I would have with you in charge of our armed forces.
How could anyone trust you with the issues when you don’t know what it takes to get food from the field to the plate?
You will not be getting my vote, nor those of the vast majority of American farmers, I would bet. Think of this the next time you cut into your steak: You have insulted everyone who puts food into your mouth.
- Kelly Harms, Cole Camp, Missouri
Greater need
So Kansas City can afford to hire a pothole czar, but the ReStart Inc. emergency homeless shelter may have to close because of a lack of funding. What’s wrong with this picture?
- Maureen Williams, Kansas City
His creation
So Jack Danforth is loftily leading an effort to save the Senate from itself. (Feb. 27, 10A, “Missouri’s Jack Danforth demands fix for ‘crisis’ in Senate”) What hypocrisy. This is the same guy who recruited, primed and backed Josh Hawley to run for Senate after just two years as attorney general of Missouri. Now our state is stuck with unfit and unprepared Hawley, who relishes his chosen role of enabling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his dysfunction.
You have no credibility with me, Mr. Danforth.
- Robert Bromberg, Kansas City
No choice
Only in our new political reality could someone like Sen. Bernie Sanders be taken seriously. If his ideas were new, it might be different, but they are as moribund as the former Soviet Union.
In the world of Sanders, we can look forward to energy dependence in pursuit of a pipe dream, health care rationing and the rise of an arrogant political minority that fancies itself the voice of the people.
Sanders praises Fidel Castro for an indoctrination literacy program, yet dismisses the vast accomplishments of President Donald Trump.
How times in America have changed that a crank like Sanders could rise to the top of the Democratic Party. This socialist fraud has been tried and failed before with the same decline into poverty and ideological duplicity.
We wouldn’t be given a choice with Sanders and his radical supporters. The outcome would be to force us into their program whether we like it or not.
- Gregory Bontrager, Hutchinson
Why Bernie
President Donald Trump broke campaign promises, made the Washington, D.C., swamp worse, enriched his billionaire buddies with a tax giveaway that hurts working families and aims to cut Social Security. Sen. Bernie Sanders is an independent with a 50-year record of standing up to corrupt political establishment elites.
Why do I volunteer for Sanders making calls and knocking on doors? Because polls show his fighting spirit can beat Trump if we all get out and vote.
- Will Hall, Kansas City