Reprinted from The Trumbull Times © Copyright 2009
May 28, 2009

To the Editor:

Ms. Mason/Halapin's letter regarding an "investigation" of her displays a vivid imagination. There was no investigation. I did not ask (or tell) my assistant registrar to check the voting record of "Ms. Mason."

My assistant registrar, Kathy, decided to check public records to see if Ms. Mason and another person are registered voters in Trumbull while preparing a response to their letters. This type of information is routinely provided to political candidates, elected officials and other interested parties.

Ms. Mason/Halapin takes a huge leap claiming my two posts on the TrumbullChat forum under the topic of "local issues and politics" and the thread of "Trumbull Times this week" are statements of the Republican Party.

For more than a year, every post I have made on TrumbullChat contains the following tag line, "The opinions expressed herein are my own. They do not necessarily represent the views of any political party or organization unless clearly stated as such." I believe Ms. Mason/Halapin did not read TrumbullChat but was acting on second hand information.

A casual reading of those two posts made on May 16, would show she is seeing monsters under the bed. Those two posts have not been edited and still appear on TrumbullChat. Ms. Mason/Halapin did call me at 6:29 p.m. on Sunday, May 17. She seemed rather "excited" and with my hearing loss I could not understand much of what she said, although she was accusing me of investigating her.

I explained there was no investigation, just a look at public records to see if "Dee Mason" was a Trumbull voter.

After receiving a phone call from Trumbull Times editor Donald Eng on Monday regarding her accusations, I checked my caller ID and then an Internet search of her phone number and saw that it is listed to "Dolores Halapin." I neither understand nor care why she uses two different names. the fact is, she signed a public letter using one name and is registered to vote in a different name.

Readers can judge for themselves the amount of "negativity" contained in my TrumbullChat posts compared to Ms. Mason's most resent letter to the editor.

William S. Holden, (R)
Registrar of Voters