Voters exercised their legal right to select party

I saw a letter about a list of 278 Democrats-turned-Republicans, and I wanted to set the record straight. Let’s look at the race between Jim Woodward and Scott Herndon.

Jim received 8,219 votes. His opponent received 7,606 votes. Jim won by 613 votes. The number of registered Republicans who did not vote — 7700.

So, a few hundred people exercised their absolute legal right to affiliate with whatever political party they chose, then exercised their constitutional right to vote.

So did several thousand unaffiliated residents, unregistered, and Republican voters.

Together, the majority of these people chose a candidate who listened to voters about what matters to them. They voted against the IFF and its out-of-state money, its loyalty oaths, and its vitriolic extremism. So why suggest that you might publish that list? What exactly is the end goal?

It certainly shouldn’t be to suggest that maybe bad things would happen to people for exercising their rights in ways that you don’t particularly like. That would be absolutely antithetical to everything that Idaho stands for.

Idahoans think for themselves and work for practical solutions over ideology. They will not be intimidated into falling in line with some kind of partisan orthodoxy. They will not shut up and blindly vote for a central committee’s anointed candidate.

The author of the letter who made vague threats of harming local businesses by outing people is telling us that she doesn’t understand Idahoans at all.

LINDA LARSON

Sandpoint