As of this writing, both Fetterman and Shapiro have won their contests.
I live in Central PA and am an elected voting official for my county. As such, I can say some things that the average Pennsylvanian might not realize.
- The presiding “Judge” for a given precinct is elected. The gotcha is that sometimes there is absolutely nobody running, and a single write-in vote can be enough to “win” the election. Guess how I know?
- Even though someone is “elected,” someone else may perform those duties.
- The “Judge” has to assemble their group of poll workers, contacting each of them themselves.
- A poll worker may not live in the same precinct they are working in if the “Judge” can’t find anyone IN the precinct willing to work. The BOE only helps if the judge can’t find enough people to man the polling place on their own.
- In my precinct, not enough Democrats are interested in working, so Republicans fill slots theoretically for a Democrat.
Given all that, I can say that — in MY precinct at least — the tabulator was not connected to the internet — although everything is recorded on thumb drives that are kept separate from the tabulator during the return to the elections office. Also, there was no available wi-fi during polling, so that was moot in my precinct.
Training — in my county at least — is inadequate for the task at hand if one is a newbie. It also seems that each county must develop its own training materials.
Now, getting to the election itself.
Fetterman’s own Hometown Newspaper endorsed his opponent.
Why would anyone vote for a person who routinely dresses like a Hell’s Angels reject, who’s had a stroke (and who needed closed-captioning to debate), who slurred some statements into unintelligibility, and who was — time and again– the only person on the parole board to vote to let dangerous felons out of jail, and who chased and held an innocent, unarmed (black) jogger with a shotgun because he thought he heard gunfire (and has NEVER apologized for doing so) is beyond me.
He never called out Biden for saying he wanted to close all coal-powered electrical plants when PA is a coal-producing state.
Yet Fetterman seems to be winning as of this writing. The margin is slim, but…
The pandemic saw the destruction of a number of small businesses in the county. There is no more taxi service in State College (home to Penn State), where there were two companies in operation before it, plus Uber and Lyft drivers. Likewise, towing companies have diminished severely. Liberal paranoia about the Wuhan flu closed Penn State, killed a number of restaurants, and was generally an overblown PITA. Geisinger medical sites are STILL demanding masks to enter their kingdom, and Fetterman and Shapiro are okay with that. Should we look for more of the same?
I know that Pittsburgh, Philly, and Harrisburg are all liberal strongholds (along with State College, where students outnumber actual residents.) But has all common sense escaped these people?
Remember this headline from the acting (Democratic) Secy of State?
Why (how) was the race determined so quickly?
Is it simply more “orange man bad” TDS infecting their reason-deprived minds out there in the liberal enclaves?
What say you?
