Letters to the Editor of the Pahrump Valley Times

However you choose to do it, it is important to vote

I am writing this letter to encourage my fellow Pahrump residents to vote in the upcoming election. Contrary to what you may have heard, you can vote in person if you choose to do so. Early vote in person began Saturday, Oct. 17 and continues until Oct. 30. Our polling station is the Bob Ruud center on Highway 160 and Basin.

If you are not comfortable voting in person, every registered voter received or will receive a ballot in the mail. It’s a very easy process to complete the ballot and return it. Be sure to use a blue or black ink pen and sign the envelope before sealing your ballot inside.

There is one simple fact that I hope you will consider when casting your ballot. Our economy cannot fully recover until we get COVID-19 under control. Until there is a vaccine or complete suppression, businesses cannot and will not be able to operate at full scale. Of the two presidential candidates, only Joe Biden really understands this. Donald Trump continuously states that businesses ‘can return to normal,’ but we Americans know better. We have a long and difficult road ahead of us, and I believe Joe Biden offers the most viable solution.

Sharon Schlegel

Another argument for eliminating electoral college

The Electoral College virtually “erases” the individual citizen’s vote; but it affects only our individual vote for president/vice president, not our vote for any other office. It gives no voice to individuals or minority groups. It exists solely for electing our highest two offices, and injects an unreasonable, non-representative intermediary between the individual voter and the actual selection of the president and vice president of our nation. And it is time we get rid of it! All other voting is already done by popular vote.

Eliminating the Electoral College would in no way lead to eliminating states, as Mr. Jaronik suggests (PVT 10/9/20), nor does it make any “attempt to give voice …to the individual”. Indeed, it eliminates that voice virtually completely as well. And it certainly doesn’t “…prevent out-of-state party leaders from trying to influence our elections”, in fact it almost invites that, and indeed that is actually happening now, as we write!!!

Nevada, as a small-population state, has only 6 Electors, and has (wisely, I believe) designated them to be our 6 elected legislators (2 senators and 4 representatives), so indeed here our Electors have been chosen by voters.

However, in most other states, Electors are selected by governors, who also may have political pressures (as reported in social media recently in Pennsylvania, to appoint Electors who would vote for the requesting candidate, ‘regardless of the popular vote’). An excellent argument for eliminating the EC altogether!

Electors in other states are not necessarily designated before the presidential election, and in most states once chosen, they ‘generally’ vote guided by the popular vote. Plenty of room for pressure to be applied in that process. Still another good point for going to a direct, nationwide popular vote for the highest two offices!

We do have as educated and reasonably informed a citizenry as we have ever had (hardly the ‘mob’ characterized by Mr. Jaronik), and the technology to handle the process, and we can trust the voters to ‘speak for themselves’.

So while we believe in the concept, ‘one person one vote’, relying on the EC to bundle, boil down, and sum up our votes, certainly distorts that voice, in the direction of the ‘EC winners’, but not necessarily the ones chosen by the people.

The joint statement of 11 governors, including our Governor Sisolak (PVT 10/2) is admirable, affirming our “…sacred right..to cast a vote, and to have that vote counted in the presidential election…” should indeed be “…cherished, revered and defended…” by all of us. But due to the EC, that is NOT how it works now.

To fix this we need to:

1. Recognize how UN-representative and vulnerable the EC is for our presidential elections;

2. Enact a singular amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Sec. 1, cl. 2 &3, to substitute “by popular vote” for the “Electoral College”, and

3. Proceed to use a nationwide popular vote to truly let the people speak, choosing our president and vice president directly.

Sharon Kindgon Moran

Fears expressed for future of grandchildren

Having taken the ‘Red Pill’ a very long time ago, I shudder when thinking what life will be like for my grandkids in the years to come. I also shudder when reading some of the comments in the letters here, so many people don’t think for themselves and instead champion their party line, whatever the media talking heads demand they believe and slick advertisers propose.

I swear, people have lost their ability to think and use logic in considering what to believe or reject as nonsense. Like most others, I fumble in my pocket untangling my single-use mask from my keys, flop it over my face as I enter a business. I would throw it away if I could, but alas I need that gallon of milk or new underwear. We never had masks when the measles rambled through my grade school, or a flu virus … or God forbid, a cold virus. Within a few weeks all was back to normal and the classroom seats filled back up, life went on and we wondered what was playing in the double feature matinee on Saturday, or anticipating the upcoming sports season and our tryouts.

And I could only imagine the reaction our teachers would have as most of us would have lost, had pulled it from our faces, or plain forgotten it, along with our lunch money at home. I now see where a local grade school is closed due to COVID-19. I will wager $1,000 that not a single child will be lost to the virus.

Being Neo in 2020 Pahrump is amusing and frustrating. OK, my two cents worth - never abandon the Electoral College or get used to being a fly-over state, ignored even more than we now are by the federal government. When Obamacare (that promised we could retain both our doctor and insurance, and our premiums would be lower) was being negotiated in Congress, not a single U.S. senator advocated abandoning people with pre-existing conditions. We had three major whoppers that have since been ignored and we now have another being told to those who took the blue pill. Poor Aunt Marjorie will suffer and die if Obamacare ends. Ends for who? Few can afford the premiums. Beam me up Scotty, oops, wrong movie.

Dwight Lilly

What can we do about where country is headed?

It’s sad that some facts about human nature blind us to some things and find ways to justify other things. Things like revenge are pleasing, even if only temporary, while gratitude is a burden (a debt to be repaid), which stems from two powerful human traits - emotion and reason (or logic), with emotion being the dominant one, many times contorting reason to justify the emotion. The question before us today is the place we find ourselves in, where are we going and what can we do about it?

In 2016 I was disgusted with the ‘Orange man’s’ boorish behavior so much so I voted for the third party. I was also disgusted with much of the media who, during the primaries gave enormous coverage of him, either neutral or favorable most of the time, thinking he would be the easiest one to beat. After his nomination, it turned 180 degrees to negative coverage, but due to a multitude of mistakes by the Hillary campaign, including self-inflicted wounds, she failed what many considered a coronation.

Today many of these same people feel cheated, which enrages them more and has them plotting and scheming ever since to undermine the Orange man and everything he everything did.

A now-deceased wise man said of the previous administration, “don’t pay attention to what he says, but pay close attention to what he does”. And I believe he’d say something about the current administration. Comparing the results of actions benefiting citizens looks quite lopsided. Just a few examples: unemployment rates for ‘all’ groups, real spending income, reduction of welfare rolls, ending what seems like endless wars that spend our blood and treasure while only benefiting what was called by former President Eisenhower the “military-industrial complex”, which has only expanded since his time.

I realize we are all flawed and emotions are attached to charismatic personalities, those that can speak eloquently and are capable of telling us outright lies and either making us feel good about those lies or just ignoring them, while those we consider crude and abrasive, we’re unable to look at things that may be of substantive value to us. Sadly too many of us retreat to our team (or tribe), willing to overlook glaring and destructive flaws while rejecting every aspect of the other team, that has much more to do with feeling than objective reasoning.

Two quotes from the past are worth remembering by all of us. George Washington said: “Government is not reason, Government is not eloquent. It is force and like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Ben Franklin gave us a warning: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need for masters.” The question is how close are we to that need, for there has always been a ready supply of those that desire being masters.

P.S. In my published letter in the PVT, 10/14, the word “adult” should have been “assault”, which could have been my error or someplace else along the way to the final printing.

David Jaronik