Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

By Christopher Harper

As Pennsylvania voters head to the polls next week, the Democrats have created another gimmick to boost their chances for all future elections, including the 2024 presidential campaign.

Pennsylvania played an essential role in the nail-biting elections of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, so any change in the state election process may become critical.

Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has announced that Pennsylvania will implement automatic voter registration when someone gets a new driver’s license or renews an old one.

What’s wrong with the plan? It’s already incredibly easy to register to vote. If the estimated 1.7 million Pennsylvanians who haven’t registered to vote are that lazy, let them stay unregistered.

These “new” voters are more likely to use mail-in ballots, which Democrats to “harvest” ballots in 2020. Ballot harvesting occurs when individuals take advantage of the options to “harvest” or collect voters’ completed ballots and return them on behalf of the voter. While it may seem like a kind gesture to assist voters in submitting their mail ballots, ballot harvesting can severely undermine the fairness and honesty of elections.

A 2021 study by researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of California-Berkeley found that automatic voter registration increased registration in states where it was in effect and boosted the number of people voting by more than 1%.
Instead of the voter registration gimmick, state and local officials should investigate some serious organizational problems in the election process.

Just a stone’s throw away from Biden’s birthplace of Scranton, Luzerne County is a mess!

The Associated Press recounted that “the polls had just opened for last year’s midterms in Pennsylvania when the phones began ringing at the election office in Luzerne County.

“Polling places were running low on paper to print ballots. Volunteers were frustrated, and voters were worried they might not be able to vote.”

Emily Cook, the office’s interim deputy director who had been in her position for just two months, rushed to the department’s warehouse. She found stacks of paper, but it was the wrong kind — ordered long ago and too thick to meet the requirements for the county’s voting equipment.

Guess how Luzerne County votes. Democrat. Guess where the ballot shortages were most prominent. Republican precincts.

The 2022 ballot debacle, referred to locally as “papergate,” was just the latest problem in a county on its fifth election director in the past three years.

Election offices have been understaffed for years. But 2020 was a tipping point, with all the pandemic-related challenges before the presidential vote and the hostility afterward.

A wave of retirements and resignations has followed, creating a vacuum of institutional knowledge. In Pennsylvania, officials estimate that 40 of the state’s 67 county election offices have new directors or deputy directors since 2020.

Unfortunately, Al Schmidt, who oversaw the presidential election in Philadelphia in 2020, serves as the secretary of the Commonwealth, which runs Pennsylvania voting. Although Schmidt claims he is a Republican, he’s clearly one in name only from his background in Philadelphia.

The Pennsylvania election scheme is an absolute mess, and such messes make it a lot easier to steal votes or suppress them, and the Democrats have almost complete control of the operation in 2024.