Letters: Lemont needs its post office; Mail-in ballot challenge all about politics
Lemont needs its post office
Recently residents of a neighborhood adjacent to the Historic District in Lemont got a letter from the U.S. Postal Service.
These residents have PO boxes at the Lemont Post Office and collect their mail there. They are being told that they will need to pay $72/year, or $6/month to continue to have their PO Box, or they can have free delivery if they install a post and mailbox at their residence, changing their address to State College. This is a plan to reduce the number of users of the PO and maybe closing of the facility. The Lemont Post Office is an important part of village life in Lemont.
When we moved to Lemont in 1968 the post office was on Pike Street where the Gallery Shop is today. In 1978 the Postal Service made plans to move the Lemont Post Office out of Lemont to Elmwood Street, near College Avenue. Concerned Citizens of Lemont (later the LVA) formed to keep the PO in Lemont. To stop the construction, we raised $8,358 to pay the builder, who was beginning construction, to stop. We were successful, and then convinced College Township to provide land in the middle of Lemont, when the PO stands today.
The Lemont Post Office is the heart of Lemont, people get to know their neighbors, read the information on our community bulletin board, have great service by the PO staff, buy mailing supplies and greeting cards — we need our Post Office, don’t let this happen.
Ron and Sue Smith, Lemont
Mail-in ballot challenge all about politics
The Centre County Republican Party, aided and abetted by State Senator Cris Dush, is feigning outrage because a small number of voters — including military members overseas — transposed the date on the outside envelope of their mail-in ballots.
The requirement to date the outside envelope was sure to trip up a small number of voters — and since more Democrats than Republicans use mail-in voting, well, you guessed it, more Democratic votes will be discarded.
Mission accomplished.
The pointless requirement is a modern-day version of literacy tests for Black voters — an underhanded way of disenfranchising some voters under the guise of safeguarding the vote.
What legitimate purpose does the date serve? After all, voters who requested mail-in ballots received them on or after March 30. The primary election was April 23. Thus, it was impossible for anyone who used a mail-in ballot to vote before or after those dates.
But the Republicans are suing saying that a mistake in the date written on a mail-in ballot envelope should somehow disqualify that ballot.
Dush claims, with a straight face, that it’s the principle of the thing that ballots with incomplete or wrong dates be tossed out.
If Dush was the principled State Senator he wants us to believe he is, he’d be facilitating voting, not setting silly “gotcha” traps that have nothing to do with election security.
You can bet that if Republicans used mail-in ballots at the same rate as Democrats, Dush and his ilk would never raise this issue again.
Karen Stoehr, State College
