I have faith that the presiding justice who oversees the Great Neck Library election litigation will see through the thinly veiled threats to disregard absentee ballots.

The flimsy, faulty, frivolous petition filed by disgruntled litigants Jessica Hughes and Christina Rusu should be dismissed and the “some 62” absentee ballots should be counted.

Library Board Trustee candidates Jessica Hughes, an attorney, and Christina Rusu, the “Unity” Party library board candidates running on the platform against library litigation have abused our court system by starting their own lawsuit against the Great Neck Library and the other candidates. While the machine votes favored Hughes and Rusu, absentee ballots broke heavily in favor of Rory Lancman, Liman Mimi Hu, and Kim Schader, putting Lancman ahead of Rusu, and Hu and Schader within striking distance of taking the lead. It was at this point that Hughes objected to the continuation of the count, resulting in a postponement.

Hughes and Rusu hired John Ciampoli, an election attorney, fresh from his failed attempt to suppress absentee ballots in the 2022 midterms. He is at it again in Great Neck, only this time on the library’s budget funded by taxpayer dollars.

The turnout at the library election was unprecedented. Over 3,000 voted in person and over 300  by absentee ballot. On the agenda was “book banning.” Hughes and Rusu denied they supported “banning books” but did support “parental control” and “parental input.” These are euphemisms used to make censorship and book banning more palatable. This language is used by book banners nationwide.

Many of Hughes’ and Rusu’s supporters’ “moral values” did not believe that LGBTQ+ or any books they determined were “sexually explicit” should be in the library, much less the Young Adult section. Hughes refused to state where she believed these books should be located in the public library. Hughes erroneously believed that it was the board’s job to decide which books should be in the library and be placed, if at all. This is the job of a trained library professional.

Many in Great Neck who have immigrated to this country for the freedoms it offers are enticed by the lure of “parental controls” perhaps not realizing it is a tactic used straight from the autocrat’s guidebook. History portends that when book banning starts, the end of democracy follows. The slippery slope toward authoritarianism that started in Nazi Germany, the Ayatollah’s Iran, Communist China and most recently in Putin’s Russia started with the censorship and banning of books, which were against “moral values.”

Hughes’ and Rusu’s shoddy, wholly unsubstantiated petition, devoid of any supporting documentation that insinuates  “voter fraud,” is filled with spurious allegations to invalidate ballots which had a “handwritten time stamp” (when the rubber stamp broke) and ballots timely postmarked which they do not want counted. Many of the ballots they would like discarded are those with East Asian or South Asian surnames. This is the definition of voter suppression. These disputed absentee ballots are sealed and their votes unknown.

While Hughes’ and Rusu’s baseless action continues to paralyze our election, the national and state midterm elections have been held. While votes were counted in those elections, the vote counting was halted in the Great Neck Library election. These “Unity” and anti- library litigation candidates are wasting our taxpayer dollars by having the library defend itself. The question remains: Who is funding Hughes’ and Rusu’s retention of this election attorney and what is their ultimate goal?  I have faith that voter suppression will not prevail.

Jonathan Freiberg

Great Neck