What’s going on these days in Pennsylvania voting?
Commenter “Steph” writes:
There were two ballot questions in yesterday’s election [in] PA that would limit the emergency powers of the Governor. Very much a slam dunk to vote YES on both of these, especially in a state where Wolf is the governor and Rachel Levine was the Secretary of Health advising Wolf during the lockdowns (while moving his/her mother out of a care facility even as she directed nursing homes to take in COVID patients).
The result in my once red county? Election Day Yes – 52000, Election Day No – 49000, Mail In Yes – 9500, Mail In No – 45000. Why in hell are there nearly 55000 mail-in votes? And of these, how is it possible that nearly 82% of these votes are NO votes?
Luckily, statewide the yes vote carried, but barely… 1.08M to 939K.
I’ll take a stab at it.
In 2020, there were close to 7 million votes cast in the election (with around 70% turnout), but in this referendum vote there were only around 2 million. So to start with, we have only about 20% of the voting population of Pennsylvania participating in the referendum. These people are not, of course, randomly selected; they select themselves, and I would guess they tend to be the most partisan and involved portion of the public on both sides.
Then there’s the huge discrepancy between the in-person voters and the mail-in voters, with “no” winning out by a mile in the latter and “yes” predominant (although not with anywhere near as great a margin) in the former. This difference could be the result of cheating with mail-in votes in the form of fraudulent ballot harvesting (if that technique is allowed in PA) or other approaches that might manufacture mail-in votes that don’t really exist. To decide whether this happened and/or what the possibility might have been, one would need to know – among other things – how mail-in ballots are requested in PA and what the safeguards are against fraud at that point (signature verification, for example).
But I can also imagine such skewed results occurring without any fraud. First of all, you have the aforementioned extremely motivated populations participating, and the left is often more motivated than the right. So there’s that. The other factor is that people who are voting by mail – if these are real people and real voters – are more likely at this point to be those who are afraid to leave their homes for fear of COVID. Those very same people would also tend to be those who would not want to limit the power of their governor and health authorities to do whatever they wanted in times of pandemic and other declared emergencies.
Why so many mail-in votes at all (again, assuming these are real people)? Could be fraud, or could be convenience and/or fear.
Krasner got re-elected so one must consider the possibility of insanity.
After the events of this past election, I think for me the real question is will this happen again? During the 2022 and 2024 elections, in (I assume) the absense of mass mail-in voting on the scale of 2020, will there still be massive, deeply concerning irregularities. And if there are, will investigations face more bureaucratic stonewalling? Will the media continue to attack anyone who questions the “official” results?
Will we ever have the confidence in our election system that we once did? Or is that a thing of the past? Have we become basically a full banana Republic, complete with elections that are assumed to be fraudulant? A government controlled by a small oligarchy, with an economy racked by inflation and a legal system with show trials?
Three questions.
1. What was the count in Philly?
2. How many days (if any) did they have (or “need”) to add, following the election, to count the vote.
3. Did they insist that Republican election officials leave the premises while the count was taking place?
Yes, we have more bananas.
I live in the Philly burbs.
Yesterday’s vote was primarily a primary. Independents can’t vote in primaries in PA. That’s a demotivating factor there. Even when I was an R, I don’t know that I ever showed up for a primary. What the Party wants, the Party gets, so why bother?
As an independent, I did show up to vote. For that one issue. The folks running the process seemed genuinely surprised to see me. During my 15 minute stay, I saw no others voting at the “non partisan” voting station.
Over the last 30 years in my little corner of the world. The R/D ratio has flipped from 60/40 to 35/65.
Exclusive of the above observation, over the last year we have seen an outflow of New Yorkers moving here. In addition, there has been an outflow of Philadelphia voters to the suburbs. Apparently they have brought their crappy voting habits with them.
The elderly, who make up a disproportionate number of primary voters rely on TV and newspapers for their information. They have been relentlessly propagandized over the last year.
Its a miracle that it passed.
I also live in the Philly burbs (Montco). Of the ring counties, only Chester County voted Yes on the two ballot questions related to restricting authoritarian rule.
Neo: Yes, the mail-in ballots could be from convenience or fear, rather than fraud. Although judging by the crowds at the local Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, it probably isn’t fear.
I live in rural Centre County, a mostly Republican area that has turned Democratic as the State College area has grown in population, and the Penn State crowd has moved drastically to the left since 2008. Governor Wolf’s Secretary of State worded the ballot questions in an egregiously biased form to make a Yes vote sound dangerous and unreasonable, when it was a simple matter of asserting legislative review of the Governor’s now unchecked power in making emergency declarations for indeterminate periods.
Looking at the vote totals by precinct, the very lefty State College and suburbs voted against the ballot measures, while the surrounding traditional small towns and rural townships went strongly in favor of the changes. Statewide masking rules have finally been relaxed, but the Penn State core area and State College still impose local rules more strict than the state. The ballot initiative vote tracked exactly with local attitudes toward masking.
We saw a lot of Independents showing up to vote on the ballot measures, rare for a primary election. Another measure to amend the state constitution to strengthen protections for race and ethnicity, and that one was overwhelmingly adopted statewide.
Some more details here on the PA vote.
It no longer matters what happens or you think happens in PA Voting.
I have a different view of this vote. That both initiatives passed was because people are angry and motivated to vote. They don’t want a repeat of 2020. They also are on the alert to fraud. So this time around even Philly had to be more “discrete” in its fraud. This anger is not dissipating. Massive fraud can only happen in the dark. We are watching and we are not going away. The Deep State is starting to realize this.
I don’t know how strong the Pennsylvania Legislature is in asserting their authority. Here in Michigan they have proven to be ineffective. A lot of purposeless activity that is ill thought out. Where the real action is happening is in the citizen activist organizations like Rescue Michigan, Stand Up Michigan, Unlock Michigan and Look Ahead America. At this stage all these groups are getting organized and synchronized. Additionally many of us are now Precinct Delegates in the Republican Party. We are going to remake the party from within. Almost all the Detroit TCF volunteers who saw the fraud have become activists. It was our Pearl Harbor. We are preparing for local elections and then 2022 when the state offices are on the ballot.
We are organizing. We are active. We are angry and we are not going away. We believe we will take our country back.
With mail-in ballots, “Mickey Mouse” finally has a chance.
With mail-in ballots and vote tabulating machine connected by internet or cell phone, it is all just theater. Don’t waste time analyzing the results that are “revealed”. The outcome was decided before a single vote was cast. Party “A” and Party “B” have made the deal. You are just needed to clean the bodies off the street.
They call it “miscalling”, “miscalling”, “miscalling”…:
(To the sound of “Flipper”…)
https://theconversation.com/survey-experts-have-yet-to-figure-out-what-caused-the-most-significant-polling-error-in-40-years-in-trump-biden-race-160967
H/T Instapundit.
File under: Of course they do….
I noticed the uncertainty about Levine’s pronouns. I have a suggestion to simplify it for all of us. S/he/it. My wife is Southern, say it the way she does.
Here’s a rather Dominion elegant voting machine “mistake”:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dominion-responds-after-pennsylvania-election-officials-report-coding-error-voting
And this one’s a beaut!
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mostly-republican-ballots-fail-to-scan-in-pennsylvania-county-election-stoking-concerns_3823795.html
Got to hand it to ’em. They are brilliant.
Absolutely brilliant….
File under: And TRUTH shall have no dominion….