Editor, Ceres Courier,
In response to Ted Howze’s recent accusations against Representative-elect Josh Harder, I’d like to offer a less cynical and more reality based analysis. I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s three classifications of lies, the worst being statistics except statistics are not even on the side of Mr. Howze as he claims. He finds it unfathomable that Democrat Harder could have won while Republican candidate for governor Cox got more votes in this county than his Democratic counterpart. However, a very similar situation occurred in 2016 when Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote here while Republican Jeff Denham got more votes than Democrat Michael Eggman.
Mr. Howze first suggests that there is no way that a lead of 1,200 could have been erased when there were 80,000 votes still to be counted. He feels that there was adequate sampling of counted votes on Election Night to make Harder’s comeback impossible. I don’t think the Elections Division guarantees a statistically balanced sampling of the overall totality of the vote throughout the tallying process on Election Night. That’s why they take time count all the votes. How many times throughout the night and the days following did we see leads change across the country? Lots.
Mr. Howze then steers us further into the dark waters of conspiracy theory when he contends that somehow Harder and the Democrats up and down the state organized an army of felonious fraudulent voters to impersonate actual registered voters at the polls. Such efforts would be difficult to conceal. All that it would take is a few legitimate infrequent voters to show up on Election Day to vote in their rightful place where fraudulent impersonators had already voted to blow the lid off the scheme.
Unfortunately Mr. Howze’s brand of politics relies heavily on unfounded accusations like the ones that constantly flow from the White House and from many Republicans in Congress. Voters flatly rejected this form of politics on Nov. 6 and I would venture to say that it would be rejected again in 2020 if it were pursued.
Harder won because he was a good candidate that went out into the electorate and engaged voters of all types including those infrequent types that Howze refers to. It appears those voters were more than ready to get off the sidelines and support better representation. Harder’s campaign leadership, field organizers and a not so small army of volunteers deserve immense credit for setting D-10 on the right path.
Steve Pierce,
Turlock
LETTERS POLICY: Letters to the editor will be considered for publication but must be signed and include an address and phone number. Letters should be 250 words or less and be void of libel. Send to The Ceres Courier, 138 S. Center Street, Turlock CA 95380 or emailed to jeffb@cerescourier.com.
