South Carolinians can take plenty of lessons from how the 2020 vote was conducted

On voting

Most likely President Donald Trump will lose in his attempt to win this election.

As a loyal Republican it pains me to admit this: there is now little doubt that there was massive voter fraud in many districts, cities and states.

Unfortunately, there is insufficient time to uncover, prove and adjudicate each and every case.

Like it or not and evidence to the contrary, there will be a president will be inaugurated in January 2021; that is explicitly stated in the Constitution.

On the plus side we learned a number of lessons from this most unusual election season that can be used to prevent these problems in the future.

First and foremost why should we purchase electronic voting machines from Canada when we have excellent companies that make them right here in the United States?

We in Beaufort County used machines made by E.S.& S, and as a previous chairman of the Election Commission I can assure you that the machines are well-designed, perfectly functioning and incapable of being compromised.

In addition they cannot be be connected to the internet; precinct vote tallies are transferred over the phone lines.

We also learned a great deal about mail-in or absentee ballots. I know that here in South Carolina there are already committees looking into the problems and solutions to them, and there is a long list of issues.

Hopefully by 2022 — and certainly by 2024 — all necessary safeguards will be in place to prevent these problems from occurring again.

Tom Hatfield, Hilton Head Island

On the election

I’d like to make a few observations.

▪ Regarding the media and the elections:

Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen said it all in his recent column titled “The elections biggest loser? The media.”

Instead of reporting the news the media has taken on an advocacy role. Media outlets continue to peddle pollster surveys that use a “GIGO” (“Garbage in, garbage out”) approach as a political tool.

In this newspaper there were pre-election cartoon caricatures of Sen. Lindsey Graham repeatedly showed him with a pig nose. If I were Graham, I would not give it the time of day.

Sometimes reading The Island Packet is like reading a mini-version of The New York Times. There is heavy use of the Times’ articles, but that newspaper has lost all credibility with me.

▪ Regarding COVID-19:

Sensationalism is the media’s lifeblood, and regularly featured articles and headlines in this newspaper on coronavirus cases should not only show numbers like “8,” “20,” etc. 42, etc. — they should also repeatedly include Beaufort County’s population (119,000 people).

▪ On the phrase “Plantation” in Hilton Head Plantation:

I was truly amazed by a recent op-ed in The Island Packet that was written by a highly credentialed individual who strongly condemned the use of the word “Plantation” in the Hilton Head Plantation name.

The author wrote that the word “plantation” reminded him of places where beatings, rapes and the buying and selling of human beings took place. Yes, these were horrible acts. But I could not help but wonder when the author found this word “plantation” to be both “painful” and “offensive.”

Was it before he became a resident of the Hilton Head Plantation community?

And how long ago was that?

Gene Ceccarelli, Bluffton

On Thiessen, Ambrose

What has happened to The Island Packet?

More specifically what has happened to the Opinion page?

Under the prior management for editorial balance we would periodically be treated to an opinion piece by one of the twin testaments to Opinion page blarney and babble: Marc Thiessen and Jay Ambrose.

But we now get a weekly dose of both columnists.

There is no need to waste any time rebutting the recent piece by Thiessen in which he stated that a Republican-majority Senate will help incoming President Joe Biden; the reality is that this is a non-starter under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Meanwhile, Ambrose offered his own bit of blarney when he stated in a recent column that we owe a debt of gratitude to Trump for Operation Warp Speed and the vaccines that are being developed for COVID-19.

I doubt that Trump had any involvement with these results other than to approve recommendations that were obviously made by others — and to eliminate all of the delay time associated with the current process.

Ambrose wrote that this singular decision by Trump was worth our everlasting gratitude; of course, Ambrose conveniently ignored the catastrophic consequences of Trump’s routine failure to manage the pandemic.

He is entitled to his opinion, as unbalanced and unrealistic as it is.

Richard Wallace, Hilton Head Island

This story was originally published November 24, 2020 at 6:55 AM.