The counting of votes will become a critical matter if we ever decide to return to our original republican form of government with the Constitution, and Bill of Rights which our founders so carefully, ingeniously, and laboriously created. When you editorialize "Ron Sims has to Go" (Sept. 7 issue of the Ballard News Tribune) you are, I suppose, first recognizing the critical importance of honest and accurate vote counting, and then, you are holding County Executive Ron Sims responsible for the actions or lack thereof on the part of some of his charges in the King County Elections office who carelessly misplaced and failed to count several ballots.

The fact that the vote counting in the last two presidential elections was fraudulent seems a hell of a lot more significant to me than a few carelessly misplaced ballots. Sadly, the corporate media as well as the spineless Democrats, with a few notable exceptions, and the partisan Republicans in Congress, failed to investigate and report this matter to We, the people, and/or initiate corrective action.

So far the consequences of this illegitimate, incompetent presidency have been only disastrous but are now trending toward catastrophic.

Where have you and the rest of the media been since December 2000 when the first of two presidential elections was stolen?

If Tom Paine had been writing at some corporate newspaper, or Washington, Jefferson, et al. had had model 2005 Democratic spines, where would be today? Our founders must be spinning in their graves, and calling out to us: "Wake up people! GEORGE BUSH HAS TO GO!" You should be helping them.

Jerry D. Riley

Ballard