In the Feb. 7 article about Maine’s GOP not accepting the results of ranked choice voting, Mr. Stetkis, the party chair, made a curious statement about voting: “One person, one vote is a sacred principle to Republicans.” The statement begs the question: Does this apply to all votes, or just the ones with which they agree?

In 2016, I was one of the 388,273 (52.12%) people who voted to adopt RCV as a Maine election standard. Is the GOP implying that our votes didn’t count, since they don’t agree with the result?

In the last three years, we’ve watched the Republican Party try to discard or dismiss 11,900 votes in Georgia. In the last presidential election, there were 7,060,400 more votes for President Biden. Were those votes for President Biden not “sacred”? The GOP can’t deny election results and simultaneously claim the sanctity of every person’s vote. Their actions speak volumes about whose votes are sacred.

Mr. Stetkis’ statement is incredulous, when time after time, GOP tries to deny voting results. Similarly, the GOP has been chastised, more than once, by the U.S. Supreme Court, about their gerrymandered districts, which disenfranchise voters, particularly minorities. The party has no interest in fair voting practices.

If the Maine GOP wants to appeal to voters, they should have a platform that appeals to the voting population. Republicans are failing on their own merits and their inability to govern for the good of the citizens. It appears that their political agendas supersede the interests of the citizens they serve.

Daniel Bergeron
Portland

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