John Balentine opines in Magic 8-Ball (“Here’s Something,” Dec. 30), that “hyping” by the mainstream media of a possible new variant of COVID-19 would somehow be a bad idea, as opposed to denying its existence, à la his pernicious GOP.

He also channels Rand Paul’s admission that Democrats win elections by “seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible,” encouraging people to vote for them.

Balentine paraphrases Paul by accusing Democrats of “spraying mail-in ballots all over the countryside, causing another election fiasco.”

Distributing (spraying) ballots and encouraging voters to vote for you is called “democracy.” The “fiasco” Balentine refers to is the fact that Republicans lost in 2020. If Republicans had policies that actually benefitted ordinary people, they, too, could get people to vote for them.

Steve Romanoff
Falmouth