Posts Tagged → program
409
Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno won 409 genuine college games. No one can take that away from him, the players, the team staff, or the proud PSU alumni, like me.
Child molester Jerry Sandusky is a scumbag, but the football program had zero to do with his crimes. But it was the football program the NCAA punished, disproportionately to any other football program in American history. Using Sandusky’s association (not employment) with the PSU football program, and Louis Freeh’s horrendously unprofessional report (analyzed in detail on this site) to support its blitzkrieg assault on Penn State, the NCAA coerced PSU trustees and incompetent, spineless top PSU staff to sign the consent decree that unfairly punished the football program.
Enter the courts, where facts actually can matter. And thus we have courts that are correctly beginning to cast doubts on the entire NCAA punishment of PSU football. This week a court held that further inquiry is necessary to determine if the NCAA not only operated consistent with its own charter, but also consistent with the facts of the Sandusky case vis-a-vis PSU football.
Daylight is seeping in, and I do not believe that the NCAA will survive the exposure, or the application of basic logic and rules of fairness.
Joe Paterno, my hero, had 409 Wins to his credit. Those wins remain, no matter what, but hopefully they will soon be reinstated after basic due process for ALL of the victims of Sandusky’s crimes.
Did Voter Fraud Occur in Dauphin County? How Would You Know?
Did Voter Fraud Occur in Dauphin County? How Would You Know?
By Josh First
November 1, 2012
PoliticsPA recently mentioned the question raised about voter fraud in Dauphin County during the April 2012 primary election, and as the subject of that question, it is necessary to describe its genesis.
On April 24th, voters cast their ballots in the primary election, in which I ran for state senate, as a Republican, against John McNally and Bill Seeds. The final results were surprising in several ways, encouraging our team to look closely at the numbers. What we found seemed too symmetrical to be coincidental. We were then discouraged to learn that Dauphin County’s voting machines (indeed, all electronic and computerized voting machines) are reportedly easy to tamper with, and that Dauphin County’s machines are stored in a non-secure location where access is neither controlled nor monitored.
When I then asked Dauphin County Bureau of Elections to explain the physical controls surrounding the voting machines, my request was forwarded to Dauphin County’s elected political leaders, the same people who had opposed me in the primary. Their May 31st, 2012, official response through the county solicitor was to reject everything I asked for: “Dear Mr. First, This office has reviewed your letter to the Bureau of Elections, Dauphin County, and we must advise that your request is denied…your request cannot be honored…the information and access requested is not proper.”
Despite voting machines forming the foundation of America, one would think that elected officials would be the first people to instill confidence in the voting process, not undermine it. Here in Dauphin County, you’d be wrong.
What piqued our curiosity back on April 24th were the following factors:
1) Political unknown John McNally received many more votes than voters we surveyed indicated was likely.
2) McNally’s electoral success was contrary to surrounding voter trends, where Republican Party-endorsed candidates Steve Welch and Jenna Lewis were trumped by underdogs.
3) Many other Republican primary candidates have also grossly out-spent their competitors, only to lose, so huge infusions of Party money were no guarantor of McNally’s success.
4) Political unknown John McNally received more votes than Bill Seeds in Lower Paxton Township, where Seeds has been a popular supervisor for 20 years and had every reason and expectation to win big. Similarly, in locations where I had done very well in the 2010 congressional primary race, McNally garnered amazingly high results.
5) McNally appeared to receive one vote for every other vote cast for Seeds and First, in every single precinct but one, a mathematical improbability if not an impossibility. Think hard about this.
6) Simple research indicated that mechanical and electronic voting machines are easily subject to fraud through pre-programming; paper ballots are probably more reliable. All that is needed is five minutes and a device from Radio Shack, and a voting machine will give you whatever results you tell it to give, and unless someone crawls inside the chip’s code, no one will ever know.
7) Given the politics and criminal investigation surrounding the Harrisburg incinerator debt, sufficient motive exists to commit another crime. Whoever wins this state senate seat will have enormous influence on the criminal investigation in Harrisburg.
Now, I am not accusing anyone of voter fraud. We don’t have the evidence. But, enough factors and conditions add up to make me wonder if something happened; it certainly could happen. The subsequent lack of transparency and resistance by county officials didn’t help restore my confidence. After being turned down by the county solicitor, I submitted a Right-To-Know request, which was honored at the end of the 30-day period. To summarize the response, Dauphin County’s voting machines, and the little computer chips that run them, are not treated like the nuclear launch controls they should be treated like. Instead of elected officials from each party having only half of the access, all of the access to the machines and their chips is held by one or two people from one political party. If that’s not a recipe for problems, then what is?
So, if voter fraud occurred in Dauphin County, how would we know? More to the point, will the county adopt strict measures to guarantee that our sacred voting machines cannot be tampered with?
Trust in official institutions is the defining characteristic of American democracy. It’s the centerpiece of the rule of law, which we simply take for granted. Your confidence in public institutions is the cornerstone of our democracy and civilization. When shared institutions are corrupted, or harnessed to serve narrow interests rather than the broad, public interest, then democracy fails. Don’t let that happen.
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