Pennsylvania's Electoral System In Peril - When Will The Legislature Act?
Democracy is built on the principle that all power derives from the people and that they should rule. Our new technocratic elitists reject that principle. They believe that there are among us those who are somehow, smarter, more capable, and more enlightened. Call them the experts. We should simply concede power to them and do as we are told.
“Listen to the experts.”
The pretense is that this is rational and “fact-based.” It is not. It is almost a religion.
We were told for years that the “experts” knew best about how to deal with COVID-19. We were assured experimental vaccines would save us and render us immune to the disease. None of this was true. The vaccines don’t prevent you from getting the disease at all. On the contrary, the spread of COVID-19 now is almost exclusively among those who have been vaccinated, in some cases many times.
Nevermind. The “experts” somehow remain infallible. Also, you should definitely not pay any attention to the mounting evidence of medical complications from the vaccines – blood clots, heart problems, and the like. You are not qualified to judge.
The same phenomenon can be seen in regard to elections and mail-in voting. After literally centuries of reliance on in-person voting, we scrapped that system and placed our faith in a brand-new system virtually devoid of security procedures or mechanisms for confirming the validity of ballots received in the mail. The system is riddled with weaknesses and holes you could drive a Mack Truck through.
Point these out, however, and you are a ‘conspiracy theorist’. You are a mad man. The “experts” have assured us the system is foolproof. Only an idiot would presume to question our new high priests.
In the real world, at ground level, the gap between this fantasy of infallibility and what is really happening in our electoral system could not be starker. Consider some notes from a recent meeting of the Luzerne County election board in Pennsylvania. This is from a single meeting, in a single one of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties.
The chair of the election board, a Democrat, admitted out loud during the meeting that tampering with ballots placed in drop boxes in the county is and has been a serious issue. He noted that the boxes are so insecure "ballots can be removed by sticking your hand in and getting ones close to the edge out, or by pulling out ballots that are sticking out of the top of the drop box from too many in the box.'“
Ballots are being dumped into unsecured boxes on the street. They are sitting there unattended until picked up. Access to the ballots is not controlled in any meaningful fashion. Yet, we are required to assume that they are valid and pretend that the legally required chain of custody for ballots is intact.
Also discussed at this meeting was a new proposal to allow ballots to be mailed to a P.O. box at a post office. After being received, the ballots would be stored “behind the counter” or “somewhere” until collected by "building and grounds crew, or some other staff" for sorting. There will be no security of any kind for the ballots received. There will be no effort to control access. Again, we will simply be required to pretend that there is anything remotely resembling the legally required chain of custody in place.
At this same meeting, the chairman also recognized that recently 67 voter registrations had been mishandled but characterized that as “not a bad number” and dismissed any suggestion that this was a serious problem. It remains unclear precisely what was meant by “mishandled.”
In the same county, citizens pointing out problems with the accuracy of the data in the voter rolls have been told that their complaints will not be considered. The county’s official position has been that only the family of a person who is deceased or has moved out of state can inform the authorities of the necessity for a change to the rolls. Just for good measure, the county has added that any effort by an average citizen to bring such an issue to the attention of the authorities will be considered an act of “voter suppression.”
In fact, none of that is true. Under Pennsylvania law, any qualified elector (a voter) can make a challenge to the Secretary of State of the Commonwealth by filling out a challenge affidavit, to challenge a voter's status. This means that in Luzerne County the authorities have been actively working to guarantee that the voter rolls remain inaccurate and continue to contain the names of the deceased and those who no longer live in the jurisdiction.
One county. One meeting. These are snippets.
Pennsylvania’s election system is broken. Third-world nations do a better job of guaranteeing the integrity of the ballot box than the Commonwealth does.
Where is the legislature? When will the people’s elected representatives act to clean up this mess?
Happy 4th of July.