WTF Community

PA’s 18th Special Election

General Discussion
#1

Sorry I’m late to the discussion. I live in the current 18th district, and I can give you the full recap.

The Special election was for an 8 month term, and the 18th was gerrymandered that no Democrat could win. (Check the pictorial in The NY Times to see it clearly.) In May, there are primaries for both candidates - Lamb in the 14th district, a more liberal district that was gerrymandered to keep Keith Rothfus in his seat. Rothfus will most likely lose to the Dem nominee. Meanwhile, Saccone will run in the new 18th which will include all his Red buddies - the wealthy suburbanites and the Pennsyltuckians, or the Foxwashed. But Saccone will also have Republican competitors, and he ran a scortched earth campaign that was so dirty, people might want a fresh face.
I’m not sure if I am in Lamb’s district or yet a different district, represented by Mike Doyle.

So the Republicans spent $10M on a scortched earth campaign against a political virgin, and it backfired, badly. NOW, they are making claims that the machines did not register Saccone votes to Saccone, but to Lamb. These issues were brought up back in 2016, but since The overwhelmingly Republican PA legislature dismissed it. Saccone was one of those PA legislators.

The funniest part of all this is that these machines COULD have been hacked, and the delicious irony would be if the Republicans proved they were hacked by the Russians! On this pretty insignificant race.

Besides voting, I stood outside on that cold Tuesday morning to collect petition signatures to force the PA legislature to put up a bill that makes drawing the PA district maps in the hands of a Tri-partisan committee - 3 each of Democrats, Republicans and Independents, to end gerrymandering once and for all. Here is an excellent Wired article chronicaling how extreme the state of PA was gerrymandered:

7 Likes
📆 What The Fuck is on the Calendar
#2

Thank you for this detailed information!!!

1 Like
#3

Well the Russians have already been hacking our power grid too, so what’s a few voting machines, give or take? :open_mouth: We may all have PTSD by the time we get trumpy-bear out of office, but we’re glad to have your input on this nail-biter of an election. Shout out to the “Geeks” who fixed PA- :vulcan_salute: Now to rid our nation of all the other gerrymandering…

2 Likes
#4

Like the social media hacking, the possible (but not probable) voting machine hacking, and the computer-generated district maps, we Americans are using computers to sway influence in ways that many people still either don’t understand or don’t believe.

3 Likes
#5