Our vice president spoke recently from the floor of the convention in Chicago accepting her party's nomination for President of the United States. She made a point in that speech: "As a prosecutor, when I had a case, I charged it, not in the name of the victim, but in the name of “The People” ... A crime against one is a crime against all."

But most of us don't feel such an offense. It's hard to claim that some crimes (say, a theft) committed a thousand miles away is against us. That impact would be hypothetical, along the lines of "what if everyone behaved this way?" These "what if" explanations lack the power to make the blood boil. But it's not "hypothetical" when the thing being stolen is someone's vote. When a person loses his or her vote wrongfully, all the rest of us have lost our votes, too. We have reason to be outraged. Witness the response of the "stop the steal" rioters at the Capitol who believed that their votes had been stolen. They embraced the president’s shameful lies, and their blood was boiling. If election results can be nullified by false proclamations, our votes are meaningless. The proclaimer becomes king.

Democracy will have been stolen from us, and the crime has surely been against us all.

Richard Lathrop

New London