Dumb letters to the Editor

If you read letters to the editor of any major newspaper, you soon realize there are a lot of people out there who have opinions, but absolutely no facts.

A recent one really amused me. The writer, surely a die-hard Democrat, was re-beating a dead horse about how Kerry actually should have won Ohio in the national election. His argument was that some of the 'provisional' ballots were not counted. As he said, "Many of these were not counted because the voters were not registered." How dumb can a person be? Of course these ballots were not counted, if the person was not registered to vote. That's the law. If you don't register, then you don't get to vote.

Apparently this person had no clue as to the use of a 'provisional' ballot. This is used when there is a question about a voter's eligibilty. A provisional ballot is used, and then it is checked with the election board. If the person is not registered, or is a convicted felon, or for other reason is not eligible, the vote is not counted.

But, this writer was convinced that all those provsional ballots that were determined not elgible to vote would have been votes for the Democratic candidate. I don't know how he thought he knew this, so this is a secret ballot, but I am sure there would no way to convince him that not only was he wrong, but also that he was pretty damn stupid.