Opinion articles provide independent perspectives on key community issues, separate from our newsroom reporting.

Letters to the Editor

There’s a better way for us to vote

As I helped a widow transfer a half million dollars to and from a New York bank account Thursday online from her hospital bed, I wondered how difficult could it be to transfer our vote online. Any self-respecting Russian or Nigerian ought to be more interested in hacking the trillions of dollars that are transferred online daily than my vote.

Why should I waste space – when every one of us uses the internet for our most sacred investments and everything else – to explain how simple it would be to “program” elections online. I think I could write the program. And it would be secure. So, as in all things, I can only assume that to “fool the public” there must be subliminal powers at play.

Keep the polling places open if you still like your black and white TV, but please, somebody, step up and demand that we create an environment that safely allows us all to vote as if we have this new thing called electricity.

Could it be that both all-powerful parties are afraid that if everyone of us has equal opportunity to vote, they would lose their hold? Just a thought: Would it be easier for an unknown candidate to make a serious run independently without spending a billion dollars? Can’t have that; the great politicians in charge are doing such a wonderful job!

Chandler Russell

Hilton Head Island

World will miss Beaufort’s Joe Mix

It’s impossible to imagine Beaufort or, for that matter, the world without Joe Mix. It’s hard to imagine not seeing his green truck parked at the Boys & Girls Club Thrift Store on Boundary Street, or seeing his welcoming face while shopping.

It will be sad not to see Joe and Lin together at the Center for the Arts or in line at the polls or at so many events around town. Some people are just fixtures – and Joe Mix was one of them. Joe and Lin’s generous handprints are all over so many good things in the Beaufort community and far beyond.

I remember many regional and national Boys & Girls Club conferences at which Joe, alongside people like Colin Powell and Denzel Washington, was recognized for his dedication and support for children, here at home and all over the country.

I remember seeing him with a shovel in his hand in the early 1990s when ground was broken for a new Boys & Girls Club on Boundary Street that opened its doors the first day to more than 500 of Beaufort’s kids. I remember that Joe was there to lend a hand that first day. What chaos! But what success!

Thank you, Joe Mix, for what you have meant to Beaufort and, for that matter, to the world. We’re going to miss you, and the green truck.

Kay E. Merrill

Beaufort

Address reason they are fleeing

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, recently named three communist or leftist Central and South American countries – Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua – as a “troika of tyranny.”

The American press has recently identified most participants in the current human-wave caravan moving through Mexico to the the United States as fleeing violence and oppression in two non-communist, rightist Central American countries: Honduras and Guatemala. Bolton needs to add those two countries to his troika of tyranny.

What is the Trump administration doing to address the human rights issues in Honduras and Guatemala that cause their citizens to flee?

Roger Elmore

Beaufort

How to submit a letter

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Or you may submit a letter online.

Letters to the editor must be 250 words or fewer and include your first and last names, street address and daytime telephone number so we can verify the letter before publication.

You are limited to one letter per 30 days.

Letters may be edited for length, style, grammar, taste and libel. All letters submitted become the property of The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette.

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