Editor,
According to the April 10 article, “New GOP organization rises in Island County,” there is now a split between Clan MAGA Semi-Bird (Island County Republican Party, ICRP) and Clan RINO Dave Reichert (GOP of Island County, GOPIS).
Luckily, ICRP Chair Tim Hazelo has offered an olive branch: on the ICRP Facebook page he posted about the GOPIS’s ballot harvesting training in late April.
Ballot harvesting (which has been legal here for as long as we’ve had mail-in voting) is simple: If you can’t get to a mail or ballot box you can give your ballot to someone you trust and they will deliver it.
But now ….
On his “Tim Hazelo for America” Facebook page, Hazelo posted, “…we have to combat it. At least until we get back in and can change these awful voting rules!”
What is the ‘it’? Perhaps that Tim, Ward and friends will harvest mail-in ballots so they can take over the state and get rid of mail-in ballots?
After losing the 2022 commissioner’s race, Hazelo questioned our “slower, less secure” elections and he wondered if the Global Elite had benefited from his loss.
In 2023 a majority of the ICRP’s “dream team” candidates lost. But this time, they didn’t blame the elites or stolen elections. Instead, they blamed all the Republicans who didn’t vote.
ICRP vice chair Ms. Tracy Abuhl took this absurdity a step further, claiming that half of the Christians don’t vote. Her solution; she’ll go into all the churches and register all the Christians as Republicans.
Last year, while running to keep her non-partisan seat on the WhidbeyHealth hospital board, former ICRP vice chair Morgan Cooper said Republicans need to start harvesting ballots like the Dems do, or the GOP will lose elections in 2024.
The reality is, this is just more child-like, selfish thinking by the county, state and national GOP to come up with reasons (and excuses) why their extreme candidates keep losing.
But perhaps the larger issue is this: Hazelo, Abuhl, Cooper, David Ward and others will read this, perhaps they will LOL (laugh out loud), but they will fail to see the absurd and dangerous ideas they are embracing.
Thank goodness decent people – regardless of their political leanings or their religion – can see through this mean-spirited farce.
David Freed
Clinton
