Parties’ approaches to lost elections not comparable

I am writing in regard to the recent Marin Voice commentary by Todd Hooper. His comparison of how Republicans and Democrats approach elections is dishonest and morally obtuse.

Hooper equates Donald Trump’s election denials of

2020 with Democrats’ belief of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Russians did interfere in the 2016 election — this was confirmed by Republicanled Senate committees and our own intelligence services. However, Democrats overwhelmingly and immediately recognized in 2016 that Trump won.

Hooper is also dishonest when he writes that Trump’s election denial has a pedigree in behavior by Democrat Stacey Abrams.

Abrams, a Black woman, ran for governor of Georgia in 2018; overseeing the election was Republican candidate Brian Kemp, then Georgia secretary of state. In that role, Kemp has been accused of throwing more than a million inactive voters off the rolls, which was unprecedented. He was also accused of putting thousands of new registrations on hold.

The citizens affected in both actions were disproportionately people of color. Abrams lost her race to Kemp by 55,000 votes. In initially refusing to make a formal concession, Abrams did indeed highlight voter suppression. She also acknowledged that Kemp would be certified as the victor.

In contrast, Trump did his part to incite a failed insurrection in which police officers were assaulted and the Capitol itself was desecrated by feces and those flaunting the Confederate flag.

Until Democrats incite an assault on the Capitol, or harangue and threaten elected officials to change their certified vote counts (as Trump did), Hooper’s equating of Democratic and Republican approaches to elections rings incredibly hollow.

— Ruth Dell, Tiburon