A heartfelt thank you to Lewis County Auditor Larry Grove and his staff. In the face of ignorant attacks on the integrity of our elections and election officials and workers, Grove and his counterparts all across the country stood tall on Nov. 8.
To believe “massive voter fraud” exists in this country one has to believe that our systems and people like Grove and his employees are underhanded, duplicitous and crooked. It is utter, very insulting nonsense.
County auditors and clerks and their staffs across America are honest, faithful public servants. Attacking that honesty and faithfulness is the virus that Donald Trump infected the American body politic with. Trump's loyal lackeys in the MAGA cult have done their part to spread the disease. Knowingly repeating Trump's lie makes a liar out of whoever does it.
I wish I could say that the danger from this disease is over but it is not. It will not end until Republican “leaders” start telling the cult (the MAGA base) that Trump is a delusional liar. They are definitely not there yet. It is likely to take losses in many election cycles to break up the cult.
I am a Democrat. Larry Grove is a Republican. Nevertheless, I trust his honesty and integrity implicitly. Our election system and those who administer it are the beating heart of our democracy. To make wild and unfounded attacks against them is to wreak a mortal, self-inflicted wound on this nation.
In an 1838 speech in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln said, “All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the Earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track upon the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and its finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
The Trump promoted election denialism we are trying to work our way through is the gravest threat to our democratic republic since the Civil War 160 years ago.
Marty Ansley
Cinebar
