Green Party choice, independent voters, high court ethics, climate peril
Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, left, and Clarence Thomas right.
, at the U.S Capitol Rotunda on December 03, 2018 in Washington, DC. A WWII combat veteran, Bush served as a member of Congress from Texas, ambassador to the United Nations, director of the CIA, vice president and 41st president of the United States. A state funeral for Bush will be held in Washington over the next three days, beginning with him lying in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda until Wednesday morning. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst - Pool/Getty Images) Credit: Getty Images / Pool/Jonathan Ernst
Green Party choice again goes missing
After mailing approximately 500,000 erroneous voter registration cards to all Nassau County registered voters, County Executive Bruce Blakeman assured voters that errors would be corrected by the Board of Elections and its printer in a new mailing [“Error found on voter registration cards,” News, May 17]. This did not happen, at least for the over 1,200 active Green Party registrants.
Our supposedly corrected mailing now lists our party as “None” even though all Green Party members register by checking “Other” in the registration form and then writing “Green” in the space provided.
The official database used by the Nassau County and State Board of Elections also correctly identifies us as belonging to the Green Party.
The incompetence manifested in issuing not one but two erroneous mailings is alarming. Green Party members were informed in the first mailing that we were Democrats and in the second mailing that our party did not exist!
It is true that the Green Party, along with Libertarians, lost official ballot-line status following the recent restrictive ballot access rules pushed through by the administration led by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Jay Jacobs, state and Nassau Democratic chairman.
New York now unfortunately has one of the country’s most restrictive ballot access laws. Despite these attempts to silence our progressive voice, the Green Party does indeed exist in New York and is actively pursuing legal and legislative actions to expand democracy through fair ballot access, ranked-choice voting and proportional representation.
— Jim Brown, Island Park
The writer is secretary of the Green Party of Nassau County.
Independent voters need recognition
I read plenty of juicy information relating to Democratic and Republican strategies about 2024 [“NY shapes up as key ’24 House battleground,” News, May 31]. The article had plenty of well-sourced comments and analysis from various professional political operatives and pollsters.
Whatever the outcome, one component of this election will be those who make their living in politics.
Like every election in New York and almost every election in this country, before the election is even held, political operatives will have disenfranchised approximately one-third of registered voters.
These are voters, like me, who choose not to belong to any political party. And we get disenfranchised by not being allowed to vote in any political primaries that select candidates for the general election.
I see no mention of political parties in the Constitution or any other of our Founding Fathers’ documents.
Yet this denial of voters’ rights persists, apparently in perpetuity. Why?
— Dennis Donnelly, Stony Brook
High court ethics code truly needed
A Supreme Court ethics code is an absolute necessity, as clearly demonstrated by the revelations of how Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have conducted their affairs [“Top court needs an ethics code,” Editorial, May 30].
A first-year law student would have easily seen the conflicts or, at the very least, the “appearance of a conflict,” a well-established governing principle in ethical behavior. But, no, these two professed originalists closed their eyes and secured great financial advantage.
Nothing in Article III indicates that a constitutional amendment is necessary to formulate a code of ethics for the Supreme Court. Indeed, many constitutional scholars concur that the number of justices and other limitations may be imposed upon the Supreme Court by congressional action. This is also consistent with the checks and balances wisely embedded in our Constitution by the Founding Fathers.
— David H. Peirez, Great Neck
We have hope to avert awaiting climate peril
Even if we could imagine the absurd notion of regional winners under our current global warming peril, Long Island would certainly be a loser [“There are no winners in climate change,” Opinion, May 21].
Rising waters and rising numbers of increasingly severe storms are only the most obvious dangers we are already facing. Look to housing and insurance costs going up, fisheries stricken by species loss due to warming waters, and tourism dollars disappearing with beaches, shoreside homes and facilities.
But there is reason to hope we can avert the worst with a major shift to clean energy.
Replacing heat-trapping gases with clean, renewable energy is a matter of preserving Long Island.
— Karen C. Higgins,, Massapequa Park
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