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Not the best use of free speech

In last week’s Cabinet, we carried a letter from Graham Smith, the chairman of the Amherst Democratic Committee, according to the committee’s web site.

In his letter, he criticized previous letter writers for their defense of a message carried on the Amherst Republican Committee’s float in the town’s July 4 parade. That message strongly criticized President Barack Obama, and we, among others, felt it was a bit over the top for such an event.

On that part of his criticism, we agree with Smith.

But Smith, we think, went too far in his letter when he, in essence, called one of the letter writers, who signed her letter as K. Hilderbrand, of Milford, a liar.

Smith wrote, “You have a right to free speech Ms. Hilderbrand, and you are not even required to be honest in what you say.”

Smith was referring to the fact that Hilderbrand, according to Smith’s research, has voted Republican in the last four primaries and was registered as a Republican as recently as November 2012, yet she said in her letter that she was an independent.

To which we say, so what? Smith contends that she is, in essence, lying when she “identified herself in her letter as an Independent …” She is, he indicated, lying because she is a registered Republican.

But here’s the thing: Many people who moved to New Hampshire in the late 1980s, for instance (and we don’t know that Hilderbrand is one such) discovered quickly that the only real state-wide primary battle was in the Republican Party. Now here we differentiate from the presidential primary, of course, but remember that the state-wide primary (for the Legislature) is every two years so, in a way, more important.

Back then, Democrats had trouble fielding enough candidates to fill out an election day ticket. For instance, if there were eight seats up for grabs in November, Democrats might only have five or six primary hopefuls, so all were guaranteed spots on the November ballot.

Republicans, however, might have 10 hopefuls in the primary, so there was a real race for those seats.

Again, we can’t speak for Hilderbrand, but we know that some people back then registered as Republicans because they wanted to have some effect upon the candidates. They might not really be ardent Republicans, but they wanted to vote for those GOP candidates who were, at best, more in line with their thinking or, at worst, less out of line with it.

To some extent, this is still the case today. It isn’t unusual to see contests in the Republican state primary and none on the Democratic ballot.

The point is, there could be a good reason for someone who is truly independent to register as Republican. Or even as a Democrat. Implying, or seeming to imply, that Hilderbrand is a liar is unfair.