This is Viewpoints for Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Paper ballot system not needed

I am not in favor of our state legislature getting rid of our electronic voting machines and replacing them with paper ballots at immense costs to taxpayers. We don't have any significant voting fraud in our state that would justify replacing our electronic voting system.

Illegal, undocumented aliens are not stupid enough to even try to vote as they would not be on our voting rolls. Plus they don't want to be arrested for trying to vote and would usually be easily recognized by appearance and speech. That would be the last thing that they would want to happen to them, and they would not have anything to gain from even trying to vote.

Our boards of elections are staffed by honest, qualified citizens who play a nonpartisan role in elections. Their roles are beyond reproach and their counting of votes as well. Why should our state government want to spend millions of dollars for paper ballots when our electronic ballots have worked so well? If our voting system is not broken, then why try to fix it?

Performance issues — again

Once again, the proof is in the performance. First you vote NO, then you waffle and vote YES to hold the $19,000 election in May. No, I am not shocked, since you all fail to see your way for what seems like forever. Your leader is prolific in squandering taxpayer money. Does the law demand this election be held before November? If not why do it?

The case for Trump

Mr. Ferguson, I believe I can make the case that Christians who vote for Democrats “hurt their witness” far more than Christians who voted for Donald Trump. There are many reasons we evangelicals continue to support President Trump’s policies in spite of his flawed character, but there is one issue he supports that has such monumental moral significance to us that it demands our voter allegiance no matter how off-putting the man in the White House can be.

Every month 100,000 tiny human beings are legally ripped from their mothers’ wombs without mercy or anesthetic. Over a million innocent human babies are legally destroyed each year in America. Ninety five percent of these babies are not the result of rape or incest, nor is the mother’s physical life in peril. Nor have catastrophic health defects been detected in the babies. The overwhelming majority are killed simply because they weren’t planned. The youngest ones are sucked out of their mother’s body through a vacuum-type hose. The limbs of the larger babies are literally ripped off their bodies, and the late-term babies — now that partial-birth abortion is illegal — are injected in their hearts or brains with a powerful drug that causes them to have a fatal heart attack, one that results in a death that slowly occurs during the next day or two.

The Democrat Party has continued to put the full weight of their political power behind keeping this holocaust legal and unrestricted, even working vigorously in state legislatures to defeat bills that would mandate giving pain-killers to mid and late-term babies about to be painfully destroyed. Moreover, a vote for a Democrat who is “personally” against abortion is a sham. So-called pro-life Democrat politicians haven’t had a scintilla of pro-life influence in their party for decades. Informed pro-life voters have to know this.

So yes, evangelicals are often dismayed and embarrassed by the president’s words, actions, and personal sins. But as long as he is pro-life, Donald Trump is not only going to get our vote, but we believe we are sharing God’s desire to prioritize this life and death matter above all other election issues.

Banish sports

Want to make the Telegraph better? Banish Sports Xtra back to the end of the newspaper so that those of us who rather read, oh, say, “War and Peace” or “The Scarlet Letter,” tomes of literature still more exciting and page-turning than sports. Flipping through 40 or 50 pages of baseball, tennis, and golf requires much effort on an iPad, a must-do since the print version of the Telegraph was ousted from our area years ago. Also refrain from bolding the list of the recently, dearly departed in the obituaries section. Bolding is much more difficult to read, especially in tiny print. And don’t even get me started on aged comics like Dennis the Menace and Beetle Bailey.

Reckless spending?

President Trump reluctantly signed the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill. He stated he would never sign a 2,000 page bill like it again. He claimed members of Congress did not have sufficient time to read the bill before they voted. He signed the bill because the secretary of defense and the president's chief of staff told him it was essential to the military. The DoD needed to know how much money it would have for the rest of 2018. Without it, the department could not plan for the future or buy new weapons and replace worn-out equipment.

The president claims this extravagant spending bill will add $500 billion to the 2018 debt. He is concerned Congress will continue its reckless spending and add $1 trillion to the debt in 2019. The president is concerned that this amount of government spending could off-set the benefits of the tax cuts. Some advisers point out that many congressional Republicans are not true fiscal conservatives, and are only interested in getting re-elected.

This story was originally published March 28, 2018 at 10:41 AM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Wednesday, March 28, 2018."