Letters | Vote Guide feedback

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(Re: “Vote 2012,” cover story, Oct. 4.) You have finally made yourself useful by publishing your Vote Guide 2012. Now I know to vote the exact opposite way on every issue and candidate you socialists have endorsed.

Thanks! John Wilson/Boulder

Your Boulder County Elections 2012 article revealed the schizophrenic nature of Boulder Weekly. All year long your editorial slant is crusading Ralph Nader progressive, but at crunch time you come out all buttoned-up Richard Nixon.

At the national level, you’re for incumbents, those people who are to blame for the wretched state of do-nothing, divisive politics. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Also surprising was your endorsement of the CU Board of Regents incumbent, as you trash the CU administration relentlessly. There’s a theme here: You’re weenies. I believe I know why.

BW’s unending mistrust of GMOs and fracking should have you salivating at the Green Party’s platform. But you go with Obama, and you don’t even mention the Green candidate for the 2nd Congressional District (Susan Hall). The reason can be found between the lines of your first paragraph, in which you give readers the go-ahead to vote third party, and you won’t even say they might be throwing their vote away. How generous.

I’ve written a novel that is in large part about the promise of independent voting and dislodging the two-party monopoly. It’s called Fools Poll (Amazon, iBookstore, Nook), and in it an underdog disabled candidate who’s never had a job takes on the two parties in a Congressional election. Even as his support builds, people are afraid they would be throwing their votes away if they vote for someone who might lose. And that’s the position Boulder Weekly seems to be taking.

Rather than lead us to progressive solutions, BW is afraid to throw its vote (endorsement) away. As the underdog character in Fools Poll tells people, the only time you throw your vote away is when you don’t vote as your conscious guides you. And as a matter of mathematical fact, the only time your vote actually matters is if you vote for a candidate who wins by only one vote, or you don’t vote for a candidate who loses by only one vote.

I wish BW had stuck with its conscious — not the Nixonian one, but the Naderish one.

Richard Wall/Lafayette

I disagree with the Boulder Weekly’s failure to endorse Judge John Stavely for retention as Boulder County Court Judge.

I am a criminal defense attorney and practice primarily in Boulder. Having appeared many times in front of Judge Stavely, I can attest that he does not favor the prosecution. An important part of being a defense attorney is to stand up for sometimes unpopular and maligned people and to give a voice for those who are accused, no matter the circumstances. Judge Stavely treats my clients with respect. The premise of my job is to be skeptical and critical of law enforcement and government, so I don’t write a letter like this casually. Judge Stavely will not hesitate to suppress evidence and statements which were unconstitutionally obtained. If the test of a good judge is whether they are willing to uphold the constitution and whether they treat defendants well, then Judge Stavely passes that test. I will not hesitate to vote to retain.

Zachary Malkinson, Malkinson Wheeler Law/Boulder