Letter to the editor: Changing rules has consequences

I found the letter “Wisconsin voting debacle unconscionable” (April 12, TribLIVE) a huge misrepresentation of what all is happening with our right to vote. Rules are rules, and that is how it is. Imagine an election where people can go around with a handful of absent ballots or go to a high-rise apartment building with hundreds of elderly voting citizens and collect mass-mailed absentee ballots and then cast the votes for these people. Can’t happen? Wrong. Look what happened in the 2016 elections in California and Georgia.

So you despise the Electoral College? Good; it needs to be repaired. Start an effort to gather enough support to change the U.S. Constitution. What about the legislation in Virginia on passing a women’s rights law so as to fall in step with 30-plus other states? Virginia supporters want to say that missing the time limits on changing the Constitution on women’s rights by eight years is OK.

The originators of the rules made provisions to make rule changes. I would remind you that making rule changes using backdoor methods has consequences. Cases in point: Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., played with the parliamentary procedures of the U.S. Senate over cloture as did Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada. Now you see the mess we have.

Ray Borkoski

Ford City