Letters to the Editor: Your ‘protest vote’ for Jill Stein is really a vote for Donald Trump

To the editor: The Times published a letter from a physician who expressed disgust at Vice President Kamala Harris’s laughing over shooting a home intruder and proclaimed he will vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in protest.

Does he simply not understand that a vote for Stein is essentially a vote for former President Trump, and the extent to which society’s preoccupation with guns and gun violence would flourish under another Trump administration?

In 2016, close to 132,000 people in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania voted for Stein. Hillary Clinton lost these three states by a combined margin of about 80,000 votes. If those presumed principled and environmentally conscious Stein voters had cast their votes for Clinton, we would have avoided the divisiveness, incompetence and hatefulness of Trump over these last eight years.

Let’s not allow that to happen again. Please use your views on guns and the gun lobby’s misuse of the 2nd Amendment to petition Congress and state legislatures to work toward an end to America’s epidemic of gun violence.

Please don’t let perfection be the enemy of informed judgment.

Michael Schneider, Truckee, Calif.

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To the editor: Whenever I read about someone casting a “protest vote” in the upcoming presidential election, I wonder what they are protesting.

Are they protesting the right of reproductive freedom for women? Are they protesting the right to vote in free and fair elections? Are they protesting democracy itself?

Any so-called protest vote is not a protest at all. It’s a vote for the disgraced ex-president who wants to be king.

Rhys Thomas, Valley Glen