Dear Editor:

I found it troublingly ironic that in his Feb. 8 column, Byron McNutt condemned President Donald Trump for meanness for having a proclivity for nicknaming his political opponents, yet, used pejoratives in a following breath to belittle well-intentioned patriotic Americans armed with facts and hard evidence, when decrying “There are ‘election deniers’ who insist the 2020 election was stolen or rigged. Then there are ‘election skeptics’ who stopped short of that falsehood, but nonetheless criticized the election. Some of those people who felt democracy was threatened and at stake are just gaslighting.”

Every informed American possessing an objective and curious mind regardless of political affiliation is well aware that our vulnerable electronic voting systems are, and have been, easily compromised whether they want to admit it or not. So the most effective way of presenting a convincing airtight argument to confront the critics is to simply let ones opponent make the case for them.

The following quotes from Capitol Hill Democrats reflect just a sampling out of scores of warnings resulting from official congressional hearings and hacking demonstrations conducted prior to the 2018 midterm elections. The hearings featured cybersecurity experts and computer scientists with the highest possible level of expertise who sounded the alarm at a time when being an election realist was fashionable, that is, as long as it reinforced the concerns of Democrats of course.

— “The biggest seller of voting machines is doing something that violates Cybersecurity 101 by directly installing remote access software which would make a machine like that a magnet for fraudsters and hackers,” – Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.);

— “In 2018 electronic voting machines in Georgia and Texas deleted votes for certain candidates or switched votes from one candidate to another,” Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.);

— “I actually held a demonstration for my colleagues where we brought in folks who before our eyes hacked machines that are being used in many states,” then Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.); and

— “Workers were able to easily hack into electronic voting machines to switch votes. In a close presidential election they just need to hack one swing state or maybe one or two, or maybe just a few counties in one swing state.,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.).

Then, not long after in January 2020, a team of 10 independent cybersecurity consultants specializing in voting systems and elections set out to debunk our government’s deception that voting machines “are not connected to the internet.”

To merely say these experts were successful would be a gross understatement. The eye-opening NBC News investigative article and television report from this Democrat-friendly source can be found by searching online: “NBC News ‘Online and vulnerable: Experts find nearly three dozen U.S. voting systems connected to internet’.”

Mr. McNutt concluded, “We need political courage now more than ever. The world looks to the U.S. as a model for free and fair elections. If we don’t have faith in our own system, how can we expect democracy to work elsewhere?”

Exactly. And who would disagree? Nevertheless, it should be undeniably clear by now that the only viable formula for re-establishing such a fundamental goal at this late stage of corruption is to crush and recycle all electronic equipment and ‘advance back’ to hand-counting paper ballots just like France. Period. Problem solved.

Perhaps, Mr. McNutt would like to join this growing national movement that’s guaranteed to be the key to saving this great nation from the evil we’ve complacently let in, and that now surrounds us.

Frank Gabl

Fairview, Tenn.