Shame on William H. Slavick for joining the political game of misrepresenting the facts during his effort in his July 9 Maine Voices column to convince voters that Donald Trump is the “lesser evil” of the presumptive presidential nominees.

His shallow effort to present himself as an objective observer of political facts is insulting to voters and should not go unchallenged.

While I do agree that we will likely be presented with two flawed candidates in November, I feel that the words of both campaigns need to be equally judged through the use of objective standards. His column does not come close to meeting this criterion.

His criticisms of the two candidates are unbalanced. I can find some truth in his negative comments concerning Hillary Clinton; however, her shortcomings do not conflict with the basic beliefs and norms of our society as do some of Mr. Trump’s. Even though Mr. Slavick criticizes “corporate media” for not strongly enough covering Mrs. Clinton’s shortcomings, he must find favor in their decision to publish his unbalanced column.

Mr. Slavick has left out Mr. Trump’s stated beliefs that immigrant status should be based on religion, that women having legal abortions should be punished in some way and that disagreeable demonstrators at his rallies should receive physical punishment.

Does our country need a president who has demonstrated a pattern of exploiting our differences as opposed to finding reasonable compromise?

Mr. Slavick needs to reconsider his premise that Mr. Trump is actually the “lesser evil.”

David Scotton

Cape Elizabeth