Petitioners should have to follow law

The assertion of The Gazette’s editors that some laws are “petty” does a disservice to people who do not flout them.Petitions are a serious business. As a duly elected Republican committeeman, I routinely carried petitions to put candidates on the ballots. I routinely saw signatures, addresses and whole pages of a petition being rejected by the county Board of Elections for irregularities, negating the time, expense and effort petition carriers put into them.From that I learned that if one follows the rules, things get done and very few of my signatures were rejected. To assert that a day late on a petition for a referendum on the purchase of a building for a new Duanesburg town hall is excusable and the town should accept the petition is to negate the rule of law. To force the town to go to court to invalidate an invalid petition is to force the taxpayers of the town to pay for someone’s sloppiness and lackadaisical attitude.I can only hope The Gazette’s editors get their facts straight before casting aspersions.Charles LeoniDuanesburgMore from The Daily Gazette:Foss: Should main downtown branch of the Schenectady County Public Library reopen?Local movie theater operators react to green lightEDITORIAL: Find a way to get family members into nursing homesSchenectady County warns of possible COVID-19 exposure at Schenectady restaurant, Rotterdam barEDITORIAL: Thruway tax unfair to working motorists Categories: Letters to the Editor, Opinion We are a country of laws. We routinely assert we are proud of that fact.