DALTON: Ballot includes hearsay

I was going to write something ironical about the ugly, red, recall signs hanging from peoples fences in Dalton Gardens and how much they add to the serene, welcoming, semi-rural atmosphere of our quiet little town, but then I sat down and read the absentee voting ballot.

A petition ballot should contain two pieces of information. One piece is the purpose of the petition, in this case to remove or retain mayor and council members. The other piece is the impact of a yes or no vote, as in, a “no” vote is a vote to retain, a “yes” vote is a vote to remove. That’s it. That’s all that should be there.

But this ballot contains unsourced gossip in the text of the petition, which made me wonder if this ballot was reviewed by the elections office. This ballot inserts hearsay and rumor into the “explanatory text” of a formal voting ballot. The “Save Dalton” group have crossed a line. Has the elections office crossed it with them?

If you want to gossip about people, do it over the fence, in the assembly hall, in your living room, at the cafe, or in the stands at the high school basketball game. But when unsubstantiated rumors find their way into the language on the written ballot, it must be called out for what it is.

Guilt by allegation, guilt by accusation, arguing the merits on the ballot. These are lawyers tricks calculated to get people to come to conclusions drawn from unsubstantiated gossip spewed onto the page by the “Save Dalton” group. We’d better be careful. This kind of McCarthy-era slander is another sign of a descending cultural trend. This garbage has no place on any voting ballot.

If the “Save Dalton” group really wants to save something, they can start by saving us from the cultural degradation contained in the part of the ballot they wrote.

STEPHEN D. BRUNO

Dalton Gardens