Letters to the Editor: Blaine County has right in legislation controversy

Editor:

I respectfully have to disagree with your dart on Friday, Oct 24, about the Election Day rejection from the Blaine County offices. 

I checked with my local clerk and recorder office in Hill County and found out that in Hill County you can register to vote at:

1) The county courthouse

2) The U.S. Post Office

3) The Montana driver examiner office.

Now that being said, I would assume that every person of voting age in the state of Montana (which includes our seven reservations) has at some time in the last two years been in one of those places during an 8-5 work day. Every high school student should have had a ninth- or 10th-grade class on basic government which teaches that we vote every four years for a U.S. president and every two years for national and state offices. 

I picked up my newest telephone book and Hays has a post office listed … there are many times that people travel through Chinook, Havre, Malta etc. for rodeos, tournaments, town festivals, powwows and just daily or monthly shopping excursions. I have a hard time believing that anyone in the state of Montana does not get to or by a post office in a two-year space of time. Elections are talked about for months on end, so everyone knows that it is coming up and if I want to vote, I need to register and, if you vote every presidential election, you never need to register again (unless your address changes, and you update your voting area).

My next concern is your assumption that rules are made to be broken. There was a deadline given, and it was missed. End of story. You bend the rules for this one thing, and then you bend for the next item/person and it goes on forever and the public wonders if there are any rules in our government areas. The trust is then broken for the majority of your population. Do you bend the rules for your business i.e. deadlines, contest endings etc? By four days? It just doesn't work in the business world. We are adults and have to live under rules all our lives — many which are for our safety and well being. 

Your dart at Blaine County was not justifiable in any way, and we need your newspaper to inform the people of the various places that people can register (maybe not this late in all three for this election) and that it is the person's responsibility to register, not the Republican/Democrat/reservations’ concern.

Ilene Parsons

Havre