TWF 287: Noting Lee Zeldin's Deceptive Campaign Mailers Upon Second Offense.

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Lee Zeldin is an incumbent Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing New York's First District in the lower seat of our national legislature. This makes him a man with extraordinary power and, with it, an extraordinary responsibility: To be honest to the people of the country, in keeping with his Oath to defend and preserve the Constitution.

He has, now twice, failed at keeping his Oath, and we cannot overlook this' mistake'.

Why 'Mistakes About The Date' Matter

As reported by David M. Schwartz at Newsday, Lee Zeldin recently sent out a mailer to many of his constituents which sought to inform them on what day they could vote. This could happily be considered “Voter Outreach,” expect that Zeldin actually sent out the wrong date. But, this is just a mistake, and mistakes happen, right? Well, as Newsday noted and Adam Peck from Think Progress confirms in excruciatingly sharp detail, this isn't the first time Zeldin has done this.

Doing this once might be considered a mistake; misprints happen, typos slip through editors, and sometimes people just write the wrong day. Okay. Fine. Once. But, once you've made that particular screw-up, you sure as hell don't make it again, because you don't get to play the, “We were careless and we're sorry” card, again, okay?  You did it in 2016 and got caught and shamed for it; you're doing it again in 2018?

Lee Zeldin must be doing this deliberately.

I won't go too deep into national politics, but Georgia Secretary of State & Republican Candidate for Governor is suppressing over 53,000 voter registrations, most of whom are Black – among other things he's doing. North Dakota's Republican-led legislature is disenfranchising Native Americans en-masse.  In Arkansas, PBS reports a Democratic candidate for Secretary of State was left off of the ballot in one county.   Let's just say this fits a trend, and if you really want to discuss or defend that trend, then you've got a lot of questions to answer, and let's go back to the local focus that The Weekly Freeporter aims to provide.

The truth is, Lee Zeldin can try to claim a mistake was made all he'd like; he can even offer to pay any FEC fines or even send out correction letters. (Yes, he should be forced to spend campaign funds to send a mailer to every single resident in his district to apologize for the mistake and make a correction) What he's done by sending out the wrong date was to deliberately mis-inform some voters who won't get or see that any correction. They'll go on thinking the election is the wrong date. They might even show up to vote and get told they missed it, and given the three-or-so week window since then, they might not even be sure where they first heard the wrong date, from.

This hypothetical Citizen, this patriot who had their vote stolen, might have wanted to vote for Zeldin! She might have just wanted to vote for Cuomo for governor. That's the imaginary person's decision; the point is that this person could even come across this very article when looking for an explanation, and might say, “Why did this guy get away with this?”

Why SHOULD this guy get away with it?
 - Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

So To Sum It Up...

Listen, I'm not trying to be specifically political, here. I'm not arguing any stance other than, “It should be noted that Lee Zeldin has, twice now, misinformed voters as to the date of the election; it is not credible to simply assume this was the result of a genuine error, given that they were called out for it publicly the first time.” I'm also arguing that Zeldin should be required by FEC law to provide a correction for a second mistake – and, given that he almost certainly isn't, we need a change to election laws to fix this.

Thank you for reading!

Jesse Pohlman is a freelance writer who spent nearly thirty years of his life living in Freeport.  He also writes sci-fi and fantasy novels, mostly available on the Amazon Kindle.