Letters: Shame on Benninghoff; Gerrymandering is to blame

Shame on Benninghoff

I would like to thank Peter Buck for officially calling out Pennsylvania’s House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff for his hypocrisy.

Benninghoff clearly stated that the General Assembly “will not have a hand in choosing the state’s presidential electors or deciding the election” nor that the General Assembly would have a role “post-election in changing outcomes” only for Benninghoff to later jump onboard with 62 others to refute the conclusive results of the election. Shame on all of them.

Please stop this insanity and the continuous erosion of our democracy.

Give it up already.

Gerrymandering is to blame

Last week, Congressmen Fred Keller and Glenn Thompson signed on to a Texas lawsuit arguing that Pennsylvania’s election results, certified by legal process and upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, should be tossed out. Why would they join this frivolous suit? Because gerrymandering lets them.

Of all the things wrong with American representative democracy, gerrymandering is the worst. It slices and dices the idea of representation, allowing political parties to draw districts in which representatives don’t have to listen to all voters and need only preach to the choir. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Centre County, where the majority of us voted for Biden.

Even after the ridiculous 2011 Congressional map was remedied in 2018, Centre County’s vote was still defused into two safe GOP districts. As a result, Keller and Thompson can ignore us. They need only pander to the voters that the map chose for them: the kind of radicalized voters that GOP State Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward fears would bomb her house if she told the truth about Biden winning the election.

Keller and Thompson know the Texas suit is an anti-democratic seditious farce, but they also know it’s good politics in their districts. So why not ignore and disenfranchise the voters who don’t matter and pander to the voters who do? In a way, you can’t blame them; it’ll get them re-elected. But when gerrymandering makes it safe for representatives to ignore truth, democracy fails us all.

What do Thompson and Keller stand for?

Representatives Glenn Thompson and Fred Keller were two of seven Pennsylvania Republican Congressman who recently supported Trump and the Texas attorney general’s baseless claim to overturn the election results in four states, including ours. I am truly appalled by these despicable and shameful actions. To suggest that my vote, which was legally cast during a pandemic, does not count is un-American and undermines the foundation of our democracy. They do not represent the ideals upon which this country was founded, nor do they represent my views as a constituent in their district.

Instead of supporting the president’s ridiculous, unfounded claims that he won this election, they should be conceding and encouraging their fellow Republicans to respect our democratic processes and follow the law. They should be demonstrating gracious and conciliatory behavior, not only to their fellow Democratic Congressmen and women, but to the people of this country.

They need to seriously reconsider their actions. They truly speak louder than words. If we are ever going to get back to the democratic America I know, we need people in Washington who will stand for common decency and the truth, not unfounded lawsuits and aggressive, vindictive vitriol. They need to support the President-elect, who was fairly and legally elected by the people, including those in their state and district. My vote counts – please honor it.

Attacks on democracy

When our Congressmen, Fred Keller and Glenn Thompson, signed on to the Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn our state’s election results, they did more than just try to save their political skins from the blowtorch wrath of Donald Trump. They supported the rejection of votes they themselves received, including those from friends, shut-ins, and Pennsylvanians overseas. Keller even tweeted he was “proud” to have done it.

In the bigger picture, they joined 124 of their Republican colleagues in Congress in attacking our mother, Democracy, leaving her sprawled and battered on the marble floor of the Capitol Rotunda. When she looks up and asks why they did this, what do you say to her, gentlemen?