Letters to the Editor | Oct. 26, 2022

The informative report “How long election results will take” highlights the dramatic difference in Pennsylvania’s 2020 vote between in-person and mail-in voters. There is little hard evidence to support the Republican claims that the “blue shift” was due to fraud. But I submit to you that The Inquirer’s statement that this phenomenon was due to “Trump’s relentless attacks on mail ballots” is also only an opinion, and a partial explanation, at best.

Perhaps it would reduce the partisan noise somewhat if a respected independent organization could do a demographic analysis of the 2020 or 2022 election results for in-person vs. mail-in voters. What are the facts?

Jim Lundberg, Quakertown

Unhappy Halloween

Cancellation of a children’s Halloween parade reminds me of my own kids’ (now in their 40s) Halloween walk in our neighborhood. One door had the following message: “We don’t partake of Halloween; it is not in the Bible.” Conservative churches were coming up with “A Christian alternative to Halloween.” It seems that Lower Merion’s School Board would impose a militant secularism in the same spirit. I would be happy to recognize Diwali, and other holidays having religious origins, as something to be celebrated, not avoided, either in schools or in neighborhoods.

Robert P. Sechler, Media

Considering that the cost of college is comparable to the cost of housing an inmate, why isn’t the focus on investing in education? Visit a courtroom anywhere in the U.S., notice how many jobs are employed by the criminal acts of a defendant. The need for police, attorneys, bailiffs, stenographers, and judges would greatly diminish. The increase of for-profit prisons would pale in comparison with the need for colleges, universities, and trade schools. Educate our future doctors to cure cancer and the next pandemic, scientists to thwart climate change, and mathematicians to reverse the national debt. We need all hands on deck. Invest in education, not prisons.

K. Mayes, Philadelphia

To Jewish people of a certain age, too young to remember the Holocaust but old enough to remember quotas capping our numbers and neighborhoods where we could not live, we looked forward to a life of declining antisemitism.

Recently we have seen a former president, a hip-hop icon, and a Republican gubernatorial candidate bringing antisemitism out of the shadows. Why would Donald Trump question our commitment to Israel? Why would Doug Mastriano describe a school where many of us have gone or have sent our children as “privileged, elite, exclusive” if not to set us apart and target us?

It is the bully’s playbook. Attack a group that you believe is “the other” to hide your own failings. If some in public life are turning against us, our most immediate response is at the ballot box. Beyond that, our religion implores us to stand up for justice.

Elliott Miller, Bala Cynwyd

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