Two sides of Kelly
The Senate election results show that over 48% of Arizona voters voted against Mark Kelly. Certainly not the double-digit lead Democrats stated Kelly had months ago.
For weeks, I have been the unfortunate recipient of Mark Kelly texts begging for campaign money. The most recent ones stating that “the far-right will fight, challenge, cry fraud” and “were ratcheting up attacks and conspiracies with frivolous lawsuits.” Not quite the message just put out by Sen. Kelly who promised to “put our state ahead of politics.”
What a hypocrite.
Diane T. Nelson
Foothills
Skin in game
Re: the Nov. 16 letter “Who should be allowed to vote.”
In this letter the writer lists those whom he believes should not vote because they don’t have “skin in the game,” i.e., are not taxpayers. He cites the Founding Fathers who argued that only people who pay for government should have a say in government.
Perhaps the letter writer would also prefer, like the Founding Fathers, that women and Black people not vote.
Women and slaves did not pay taxes because they weren’t compensated for their considerable labors, yet no one can say they didn’t have skin in the game literal skin in many horrific cases. Today, those others on the letter writer’s list also have skin in the game, albeit not money. People should have a say in the circumstances of their existence, not just people with money.
The only “mob-ocracy” I see is the January 6 insurrection. People voting is democracy in action.
Carla Johnson
Midtown
Who should vote?
Re: the Nov. 16 letter “Who should be allowed to vote.”
Yet another letter lamenting our reluctance to follow the dictates of the Founding Fathers, in this case too many people are voting and mail-in voting is partly to blame. We don’t have to imagine who the Founding Fathers thought should vote, they were explicit: White men of property, even if that property included other human beings. Who shouldn’t vote: women, Afro-Americans, those of Oriental extraction, etc. No serious argument can be advanced today purporting to limit voting due to race, gender, religion, etc.; government is a social contract and all who live within these borders have “skin in the game” and should have input as to how they are governed. The Founding Fathers should rightly be commemorated for their advancement of government within the context of their time but slavish adherence (pun intended) to their ideas is not a model for good governance. An enlarged and diverse electorate is not only key to better decision-making but essential to the consent of the governed as well.
Tim Helentjaris
Northwest side
Why are they so angry?
I recently passed a car on Oracle with “Let’s Go Brandon” and “Impeach Biden” stickers on the window. What inspires this anger against the man who restored stability to the White House after four years of chaos? The so-called radical agenda of Biden produced legislation to lower drug prices, bring the chip industry back to the U.S., address climate change, fix infrastructure, and deal with gun violence. I can only assume Joe Biden’s detractors have been sprinkled with some of that Fox News fairy dust that makes otherwise rational people vote for candidates not fit to hold public office. A certain 45th President, would-be governor of Arizona and secretary of state come to mind.
Mary Zimmerman
SaddleBrooke
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