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Open letter to Elise Stefanik

To the editor:

To Rep. Elise Stefanik:

We are writing to express our profound concern regarding your activities to overturn the will of the people in the recent November election.

There seems to be no moral line that you won’t cross in your support of President Trump. Instead of challenging his endless stream of lies, disinformation and conspiracy theories claiming election fraud with the truth, you instead engage with your supporters in doublethink — “a process of indoctrination whereby the subject is expected to accept a clearly false statement as the truth.”

Your political cynicism, self-motivated ambition and disdain for the intelligence of your constituency is shameful. You and your like-minded colleagues have created distrust of a free and fair presidential election process, the certification of which is the responsibility of each state and not the Congress. There has been no evidence presented of widespread election fraud, and over 60 cases attempting to suggest this in various ways have been rejected by numerous judges from a wide political spectrum.

The lies and disinformation you have supported as an excuse to reject the outcome of the election, claiming in classic Orwellian fashion that you want to ensure that they are free and fair, is shocking and, at the same time, pathetic and sad. Your job on Jan. 6 was to count and rubber-stamp the electoral votes and nothing more. You pledged to support the Constitution, not a dangerous, anti-democratic cult figure.

As you are well aware, President Trump has telegraphed his plan for a coup d’etat for months, invoking his conspiracy theories and lies to incite and support a deadly insurrection thereby preventing his duly elected successor from taking office. Your spineless obsequiousness and that of many of your congressional colleagues in failing to challenge this ill-conceived and seditious pursuit, in addition to your participation in the Texas amicus brief and your Jan. 6 Electoral College challenge, have resulted in the horrifying breach of the Capitol building and five deaths, which occurred on Jan. 6. Instead of providing the world with an example of how democracy works, you have done just the opposite. For your own political purposes, you have chosen to aid and abet the president in sullying our democratic heritage and collaborating in his attack on our sacred political institutions. You have been a conspirator in this process and a contributor to the tragedy of Jan. 6, which will be historically indelible.

We believe that you need to take time to perform some self-contemplation which, hopefully, will lead to recalibration of your moral compass. We deeply hope that this will result in your providing the leadership that your North Country constituents will be proud of over the next two years.

Robert Biesmeyer

Teresa Cheetham-Palen

Loraine Duvall

John Haverlick

Noreen McCarthy

Jonathan Plehn

Debora Rice

Carole Slatkin

Monique Weston

Naj Wikoff

Town of Keene

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