Having voted in the last 16 federal elections over the past 60 years, I know this 2024 election is different and the most consequential of my life. This election is not about economic, immigration or foreign policy. It is about something much more important – whether we keep our 250-year-old democratic republic or move toward dictatorship. Trump is the first American president to try to overturn an election. He claimed the 2020 election was stolen and kept telling the “Big Lie,” even after more than 60 legal challenges to the election were struck down. He pressured state leaders in Georgia and Arizona to falsify election results and recruited fake electors in multiple swing states. He encouraged the violent insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. One of the most dangerous candidates in American history is on the ballot. Please vote like our democracy depends on it, because it does.

Rita M. Breton
Scarborough