Josh First's Blog

The nine people most responsible for PA’s Election Day mess

While it takes a whole village to try to steal the votes of hundreds of thousands of citizens, and thereby disenfranchise millions of others, here in Pennsylvania there are nine people who are most clearly responsible for our corrupted Election Day results. And while some people are going to say “Who cares?,” there are others who are at least curious about how this gigantic confidence game happened in the first place, and yet other people so dedicated to good government that they want to try and correct the obviously weak voting procedure we have. This essay is dedicated to the latter, with hopes for an epiphany among the former.

In order of their level of culpability, the nine people most responsible for this election fraud are:

1. State Senator Jake Corman (R -Centre). State senator Jake Corman is the last man standing in the Pennsylvania legislature who helped re-write the new ridiculous election law that facilitated all of the cheating we just witnessed last week. When the other political party presented Corman with a proposed Trojan Horse election law change, which included mail-in ballots lacking certain guarantees of authenticity (a gigantic reg flag to any normal American adult), he swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. It isn’t that Jake Corman is gullible, he is not. Because his entire career has been spent within the Republican Party in one job or another, including now occupying the senate seat his late father held, Corman is nothing if not a self-serving, politically crafty, cunning, and ruthless deal maker. As a child of political privilege, he is also a spoiled brat, and is used to getting his way, no matter how wrong it is for everyone else; it is this lamentable trait that got Corman to accept and pass the Democrat Party election law Trojan Horse. Because Corman is so deeply inside horse-trading politics, with gigantic political blinders over his eyes that prevent him from seeing the self-evident all around him, he traded what is obviously a panoply of stupid and undesirable election law changes (mail in ballots, after Election Day, with questionable qualities) for something…what…it is not clear what the quid pro quo was. Why did you approve this law, Jake? Did someone give you insider investment information, Jake, that you used to enrich yourself, thereby inducing you to allow this election Trojan Horse inside the city gates? What good thing exactly did Pennsylvania’s citizens gain from or in exchange for the Election Day Trojan Horse that you foisted upon us?
2. Governor Tom Wolf (D). Watching Tom Wolf stand at a podium the other day, bald-faced lying, seriously attacking the justified legal challenges to the blatantly obvious voter fraud in Philadelphia is one of the great low points in American electoral history. Wolf has been in this election fraud up to his eyeballs, and now that he is defending that fraud he becomes one of the lowest characters in modern American political history. One would have hoped that he would have at least adopted the approach of police captain Renault in Casablanca: “Election fraud, here in Pennsylvania?! I am shocked, shocked!” But Wolf is not shocked because this debacle is his own handiwork, and he is unashamed. For shame!
3. Lt. Governor John Fetterman (D). Ditto above. And when Fetterman sent a tweet last week before Election Day, acknowledging Trump’s 59,000-strong voter rally in Butler, PA, and demanding that Democrat voters “bank those 700,000 ballots,” we now know exactly what he meant. Fetterman meant for his followers to engage in the orgy of election fraud witnessed and documented and complained about by so many people in Philadelphia. And is it not amazingly convenient that late on Election Day evening Trump had a 600,000 vote lead, and yet by last Wednesday morning he was at a 100,000 vote deficit? Wonder where those extra 700,000 ballots came from! Fetterman is a phony. He is not for the little guy, the under-privileged, the worker. Rather, Fetterman is for Fetterman and his own power, at whatever cost to America and its workers.
4. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D). Josh Shapiro is PA’s attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer in the state. It is a significant position, entrusted with great authority and powers. An attorney general anywhere is expected to remain above the partisan political fray, and to implement and execute the law without favor to anyone. And yet, Shapiro announced before Election Day that “Trump will not win Pennsylvania.” Not only is this obviously partisan electioneering, it is clear that Shapiro knew all about the gigantic voter fraud scheme prepared to illegally turn Trump’s hard-earned Pennsylvania win into a fraudulent Biden win. Shapiro had knowledge of the election law crimes that were about to occur, and not only did he not stop them, or investigate them after the fact, he actually gloated about them right before they were committed.
5. 5-9. The last five people most responsible for PA’s Election Day fraud are the five Pennsylvania State Supreme Court members Christine Donohue, David Wecht, Debra Todd, Kevin Dougherty, and Sally Mundy, all (D), who issued a last-second, patently illegal/ unconstitutional order to extend Pennsylvania’s Election Day vote count for many days after Election Day, and to even further diminish the normal commonsense safeguards that guarantee that every LEGAL vote is counted. The Court majority’s decision went against the plain texts that guide and shape jurisprudence. It was clearly partisan and designed to give every leeway for the election fraud that inevitably followed in its wake. In contrast to their decision, Pennsylvania’s Constitution and the US Constitution make it clear that the state legislature is the sole source of Election Day date, time, and rules. Not the courts. So what these five political activists on the Court did is turn themselves into a five-person legislature, usurping the decision making authority of their co-equal branch of government. If jurists are not people of letters, but rather raw partisan political warriors, then that branch of government has failed.

Where does this leave us? Well, all I can do is write about what is happening. If Pennsylvanians are so apathetic and uninvolved that they allow these people to remain in their public offices, then we have brought down upon our own heads our own demise. Because American government only exists by the consent of the governed. When the governed become uninvolved, uncaring, and allow incompetent or criminal behavior by elected officials to persist, then self-government has failed. Consent has then been given to officials to do whatever they want, regardless of law or constitution. It means that the rule of law has ended, and a simple political power tug of war is under way in its place.

Apathetic citizens will always lose that tug of war, because the political insiders always find a way to accommodate each other.