Are Some Voters More Equal Than Others?

The following letter was sent to the Register Star by a challenged Stuyvesant voter, but it was not printed. In fact, I haven't seen a single letter on the topic of the challenged votes on the Register Star's opinion pages. Why not? Clearly it's not because they aren't receiving any. (I was a challenged voter, and mine was not printed either.) Even though the challenge was dropped in all but Taghkanic, it was only because they'd gained enough information from the challenge process to know that those votes were no longer needed to win or lose. And I would be surprised if they weren't receiving letters from still-challenged Taghkanic voters, and their neighbors. What gives?

-Michelle Richardson

To the editor,

Only because we are Democrats and have an apartment in New York City, for the second time this year my wife and I have had our ballots challenged by the Republicans. We are stunned. How is this possible? Every citizen has the right to establish one residence as the primary one, the place from which they vote. For us, for 19 years, that place has been on Ridge Road in Stuyvesant, and I don't believe we've missed a single election. We happen to be here four or five days every week, but that's really irrelevant. The fact is that the law clearly permits us to be registered to vote from our primary residence and from no other site. We faithfully pay our taxes, and no one has suggested that we pay less because we have a second home or because we have no children in the school system. I'm an 83 year old veteran who has worked hard all his life and treated his neighbors with respect. It is more than a little distressing to find that because I am a Democrat in a Republican dominated town that I am being treated as a fraud and a second class citizen.

Sincerely,

Ed Kornbluh