For many years, Swarthmore, and Delaware County was safely Republican. Recently the tide has turned, as it usually does, and now both Delaware County Council, and the Borough of Swarthmore, are solidly Democratic. Though many have ascribed it to Swarthmore College’s influence, or “the Kremlin on the Krum”, as one Spiro T. Agnew called it, it was probably time for a change.
In the 2020 Election, Swarthmore had 3,345 votes for Biden and 427 for Trump. The Borough is 59.3 D and 37.0 Exact number of Registrants, it seems, were only available from the Delco Bureau of Elections, via a release of information form, which my inner Libertarian rebelled against.
The Swarthmore Republican Party does exist, but it has no electronic presence!
The Swarthmore Democratic Party has a Facebook page updated on Sep. 28 (as of Oct 9), The website for the Swarthmore Democratic Committee was last updated in 2018, and also uses Latin (the influence of the College, no doubt). By the way, there was a Swarthmore College Republican Group, but….
As for the Nov 2, Municipal Election, Republicans Albert Federico and David Rowley are standing for Inspector of Elections in their Precincts; 2 out of the 13 major Party Candidates. Albert mentions that he is “running to retain his current position as Minority Inspector”. He could only become the Majority Inspector if he garnered more votes than the Democrat running in his precinct. David Rowley is fairly reticent.
As a Green, I don’t really have a dog in this hunt, though I’ll vote for the Libertarian on the Swarthmore ballot, Patrick John Hochstuhl, who is standing u for Constable. A Constable (courtesy of Berks County) “A Constable is a sworn Law Enforcement/Peace Officer that can arrest for felony crimes and breaches of the peace committed in his presence, or by warrant anywhere in the commonwealth.”
There are 117 pages in the Municipal Races, just for Delaware County, and there are only 3 Libertarians and one Green running, which is a lost opportunity because many of these offices are unopposed. Among Independents, a David Cleary is running for Garnet Valley School Board.
Statewide, there are almost 150 Libertarians running for various offices, and nine Greens. One of whom, Kearni Warren, will be part of a three-way League of Women Voters of Central Delaware County Candidate Forum 7 p.m., tomorrow, Oct 12 . It will be live-streamed on YouTube. Visit here for details.
I spoke to one of the Republicans in Swarthmore with a long and devoted history with the Party about his experiences. He is still active, though a young senior. we discussed the history of the history and future of the Swarthmore GOP, and how things had changed and not changed.
For purposes of this article, he agreed to the interview as long as his name wasn’t used, I’ll call him RS (Republican in Swarthmore)’
Swarthmore, Pa., for those who don’t know is overwhelmingly Democrat.
RS remembers the time when the Borough was almost all Republicans and now is almost, well it is all Democrat, except for a few minor offices.
He didn’t feel it had changed “a whole hell of a lot”, and that Borough Council continued to be dedicated to “the needs of the local citizens”.
We also touched on Alice “Putty” Willets , whom he worked with in her capacity on Borough Council and who I knew for her work on the “Dew Drop Inn” Senior Center. We both agreed it was a shame she was never elected Mayor.
RS says he has maybe received maybe 10 “crazy comments” in his various duties for the Borough about being a “Republican”, probably the same I have received for being a Green and not a Democrat.
RS is a proud Swarthmore College graduate and we discussed where he agreed and disagreed with the College’s decisions I. e. He thought the Inn was “a great enrichment”, for instance, but worked against the College dropping football. How the College affected the Blue Route (2 lanes rather than four), and how the College seeks to maintain “good community relations” by having Athletics, Concerts, Lectures , etc open to the public.
Lastly, we both being Seniors, feeling “it beats the alternative”, we discussed how the Borough helps with walkability by keeping the sidewalks in shape by reminding homeowners about repair, trimming bushes, etc. Right now, there’s a whole vibrant downtown area, but people of all Parties are becoming opposed to this huge Condo project that might eviscerate up to 50 percent of our shopping area. (More about that in the future). Like many of us, he worries that the increasing RE taxes and higher rents will affect the future of Swarthmoreans to continue to “age in place”.
Maskless Parents Cause Panicked Board To Call Police — A passel of protesting parents entered the Garnet Valley School Board meeting sans masks, Aug. 24, resulting in a call to police and the board members panically prancing from the room.
The Pennsylvania school district in suburban Philly passed a policy, Aug. 16, requiring all entering district buildings to wear masks.
The parents were pointing out that the policy wasn’t science-based. They were prepared to present evidence showing such, but, as noted, the board members panicked and pattered away.
Leah Hoopes, who was one of the parents and is one of our favs, says the policy is not just stupid but is counter-productive to health and education.
She notes that The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) describes significant contamination issues concerning masks and indicates they are ineffective if used improperly as they would invariably be.
“If this is about safety is Garnet Valley replacing the masks every time they are touched?” Leah said. “No because it’s the illusion of safety.”
Leah also points outs that hearing impaired children can’t read the lips of teachers wearing masks, a problem the district is pointedly ignoring.
“Garnet Valley spent $40,000 on resurfacing tennis courts ,tennis courts that were locked up in 2020, while they simultaneously told a mother of a hearing impaired child they wouldn’t pay for clear masks for the teachers so she could read lips,” she said.
A Daily Times story describes the number of protestors as between 30 and 40. Leah says it was 50.
One of the few bright sides about the pandemic is that our public schools are revealing themselves to be nowhere near as effective, or caring, as those who run them pretend they are. The possibility of reform progresses. Money should follow students not systems whose primary purpose seems to be providing six-figure pensions for the privileged. Vouchers would automatically shift the power balance to the parents from the bureaucracy.
Maskless Parents Cause Panicked Board To Call Police
Impeachment Lawyers Representing Delco Vote Fraud Whistleblowers –Leah Hoopes and Gregory Stenstrom have retained attorneys Bruce Castor and Michael van der Veen to represent them in their crusade to explain the bizarre irregularities in Delaware County, Pa.’s voting tabulations from the Nov. 3 election.
Castor has already entered his appearance in Delaware County Court of Common Pleas, says Ms. Hoopes.
Castor and van der Veen were part of the the victorious team in Trump’s second kangaroo-court impeachment trial.
Ms. Hoopes and Strenstrom –who were Delaware County Board of Elections certified poll watchers and observers at the counting center — testified at the Nov. 25 hearing in Gettysburg before state senators that the chain of custody for ballots was shattered in Delaware County, and the USB drives containing records from voting machines disappeared.
When the Board of Elections ignored their concerns, they took the matter, on Dec. 22, to Delaware County Common Pleas Court.
Judge John Capuzzi did not allow them to present evidence or allow discovery to see ballots and envelopes, Ms. Hoopes says.
After Capuzzi dismissed their case on Jan. 11 –with prejudice — the Democrat-controlled county, in which can only be considered an act of intimidation, sought$19,224.56 in attorney fees from the whistleblowers.
Ms. Hoopes says their fundraising campaign has allowed them to hire the high powered legal team but money is still needed and contributions are continued to be accepted at https://givesendgo.com/protectingyourvote.
Pennsylvania Poll Watchers Sued By County For Questioning Election Results — Leah Hoopes and Gregory Stenstrom are being sued for costs — claimed to be $19,224.56 — relating to their actions against the Delaware County (Pa.) Board of Elections for perceived irregularities stemming from the Nov. 3 election.
Leah and Strenstrom –who were Delaware County Board of Elections certified poll watchers and observers at the counting center — testified at the Nov. 25 hearing in Gettysburg before state senators that the chain of custody for ballots was shattered in Delaware County, and the USB drives containing records from voting machines disappeared.
Leah says when the Board of Elections ignored their concerns, they took the matter, on Dec. 22, to Delaware County Common Pleas Court.
Judge John Capuzzi did not allow them to present evidence or allow discovery to see ballots and envelopes, she says.
And now, the Democrat-controlled county, in which can only be considered an act of intimidation, is seeking attorney fees, despite the attorneys defending the board being county employees.
OK, there doesn’t seem to be any dispute that USB drives vanished and the chain of custody was violated.
Why aren’t the courts interested in investigating? Why hasn’t there been any resolution to the voter books that were given to unauthorized persons as we reported on Oct. 31?
Capuzzi is a Republican. So what? People are starting to realize that it is not about Democrat vs Republican but a battle between people who want to get rich off of government — i.e. have the people be the servants — and those who know that it is government that should serve the people.
Leah says the Delaware County Republican Party has abandoned them in their battle as has the state party. Leah says the GOP lawyer they had quit and their new one, Deborah Silver, has been threatened with disbarment.
“We are being denied our 1st Amendment rights plain and simple,” said Leah. “Who is protecting us? Where is law enforcement?”
Penn Delco Falling For Marxist Con Job? — The Penn Delco School Board will vote on a resolution, Feb. 24, to created a “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” steering committee which is obviously a gateway to propagandize your children to hate themselves, their country and you.
“The greatest threat to American society today . . .is coming from the diversity, equity, inclusion industry,” warns retired Princeton University and Vanderbilt University Professor and author Carol Swain. “It is steeped in critical race theory which is Marxist. It divides people. When you think about what is taking place on college campuses and also now in K-12, children are being bullied, they’re being shamed. Teachers are being encouraged to teach nonsense, and they may justify it by saying it is fighting racism, it’s helping racial and ethnic minorities; it’s really harming everyone’s child.”
Why would a school district need to a committee to study “diversity, equity and inclusion” anyway? If it was doing its job of creating literate, numerate citizens who knew what their rights and obligations were under the law the words would be moot.
On the other hand, if it wasn’t doing its job maybe they would have to insincerely mouth politically fashionable phrases to signal virtue and cover up its failure. The salaries and pensions can be a nice racket after all.
You make the call. Here’s the resolution.
This video of school director Lisa Esler is being circulated in attempt to shame her for her opposition to this twisted resolution.
Bad news for them. She is not shamed. And we are proud of her.
Don’t buy the claim that this is “just a committee”. If the resolution passes the goals will be realized.
Chinook Block II Will Keep Delco Plant Busy Until 2035 Says Boeing — Boeing Defense has been boasting on Twitter that the latest version of it Chinook H-47 helicopter will keep its plant in Ridley, Pa. busy for the next 15 to 20 years.
Boeing says 542 aircraft will be coming to the plant for upgrades which include new rotor blades, a new drivetrain, an enhanced fuselage and redesigned fuel tanks.
The Block II will replace the F model and carry 2,000 pounds more bringing the maximum load to 22,000 pounds.
The Chinook first flew on Sept. 21, 1961.
Chinook Block II Will Keep Delco Plant Busy Until 2035 Says Boeing
Dem Partisan Acquired Delco Voting Machines In July — The voting machines for Delaware County, Pa. were quietly acquired in July by a firm controlled by Devin Talbott. Devin is the son of Strobe Talbott, a rabid Democrat partisan with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and unsavory connections to Russia.
Delaware County, Pa. has been one of the hotbeds of the national vote fraud scandal. It came under Democrat control in 2019.
Delco’s voting machines are made by Hart InterCivic, which until July 3 had nearly 80 percent of its ownership held by H.I.G. Capital, a Miami, Florida-based private equity firm.
On that date, that share was transferred sans fanfare to Devin Talbott’s Enlightenment Capital.
A whole lot of ownership flipping of voting machine companies occurred in the last six months.
Dem Partisan Acquired Delco Voting Machines In July
Republicans Silent About Fraud Like Good Little Pennsylvania Lambs —UPDATE: We have heard back from a local party official, who convinced us the issue is not being ignored.
The silence puzzles. We have seen no press releases or even tweets or Facebook posts from Delaware County Republican officials or candidates about the rampant Nov. 3 vote fraud allegations since Halloween.
Democrats will say “HA, that proves Trump is making it all up.”
They have a point, my Republican official friends, many who read this site.
Where are you?
You don’t have to sign on to wild and exotic claims regarding Frankfurt shoot outs and Chinese ownership of voting machines.
Delaware County, Pa. is one of the hot beds of the national controversy. You can address the real, specific and concrete claims being made concerning run-of-the-mill violations of election law.
Gregory Strenstrom — you all know him right? — say the chain of custody has been shattered for more than 100,000 votes in Delco. He says 47 USB drives have disappeared.
Is he telling the truth? If yes, he can probably use some back up. If no, you can gently point that out and, well, show us where the thumb drives are.
More significantly, if yes — and we are confident that is the answer — you can start demanding new elections for Dasha Pruett, Robert Smythe, Thomas H. Killion and the other losing candidates for that matter.
Nothing to stop Dasha et al from doing it themselves, if you think about it. Tweets are free.
Why hasn’t the Delco GOP leaderships demanded an investigation into the missing voter books? Granted county District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer — the choice of George Soros — will most certainly not investigate nor will partisan hack state Attorney General Josh Shapiro but silence is consent and the Delco GOP certainly seems to be consenting with its silence.
And you don’t have to stick to Delco. You can ask how Bill Barr’s investigations (that’s a joke, son) into the intimidation of election officials in Philadelphia are going. You can ask if they’ve ever made an arrest into the theft of those Philly election USB drives.
Your silence is why so many of us love Donald Trump and have lost all respect for you.
As the Philadelphia Republicans — and maybe a certain Montgomery County Republican — have learned being in second place is a pretty soft job that can keep you fat and happy.
Republicans Silent About Fraud Like Good Little Pennsylvania Lambs
Massive Vote Fraud Established In Pennsylvania — It’s certain that there was massive fraud in the election and Donald Trump is the winner.
Wednesday, Nov. 25, the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Committee chaired by Senator Douglas V. Mastriano (R-33) held a hearing regarding the Trump campaign claims.
Gregory Strenstrom — who has expertise in forensic computer science, security and fraud and who was a poll watcher in Chester — revealed that in now-Democrat-controlled Delaware County, the chain of custody was shattered for more than 100,000 ballots; all the legally established procedures were ignored; and 47 USB cards containing vital data have disappeared.
“All chain of custody logs, records, yellow sheets, everything was gone,” he said. “All forensic evidence and all custody sheets are gone.”
The only fair solution is to throw out all of Delaware County presidential votes and hold new elections for the other offices.
Montco GOP Chairwoman Elizabeth Preate Havey testified starting at the 1:40:00 mark that county’s Democrat-controlled administration did not allow the Republicans meaningful view of the mail ballots at any time despite numerous requests. Further, the Republicans were initially told they “could not directly check the mail-in ballots”. The county agreed after push-back to allow two watchers in the counting room but they were never able to see the ballots up close, she said.
“There was no meaningful observation of the ballots,” she said. “And absolutely no check of the ballots by anyone other than the county staff — which is all run by the Democrats — as to whether or not these ballots met election code criteria.”
She said they could not check to see if voters voted twice or if voters were deceased.
“And with the removal of the signature . . . there was no way to protect against someone fraudulently voting for a registered voter,” she said.
She said this involved 200,000 ballots.
She said the Republicans were not provided with the county’s change in rules that allowed curing of the ballots. She said the county did not allow the GOP to have a representative present during the pre-canvass when it reviewed and contacted voters about defective ballots.
This type of pre-canvass was illegal, she said.
She said voters told her they received mail-in ballots even though they did nor request one.
She said at least 188 deceased people voted in Montgomery County.
Montco GOP Executive Director Julia Vahey followed Ms. Havey and said that she was one of the Republican observers that were finally allowed into the counting room.
“I was corralled into a small, narrow holding area which was blocked off by tables and Plexiglas barriers in the corner of the room,” she said. “I only had visibility to the space were ballots were flattened and scanned. This was a huge area and the closest scanner was approximately 6-feet away and the farthest approximately 25-yards away.”
She had no access or view of the room where the ballots were sorted, outside envelopes were inspected or were the outside and secrecy envelopes were opened. She said the space was divided from the scanning room by a large white wall.
It was a separate room although the county election board insisted it was all one.
“During our walk-through of the canvass facility, Sunday, Nov. 1, we argued that it was a separate room and were told by the County chief operating officer (Lee Soltysiak) that we would be able to view this space by security camera footage.”
She said the footage was streamed to a conference room on the other end of the building that was a four-minute walk away. She said the footage was of extremely poor quality and one could only see pixelated images of workers moving around the room and there was no ‘meaningful visibility’ of the ballots.”
She still lacks the information to tell voters that their vote was counted.
Col. Phil Waldron, a retired Army electronics/information warfare specialist, had maybe the most damning testimony starting at about the 1:09:00 mark.
He says his team has been working on voter machine manipulation since August but has joined with another team that has been involved with the matter since 2018 election after “after significant anomalies were observed in the Texas senate race between Democrat Beto O’Rourke and incumbent Republican Ted Cruz; and the Kentucky governor’s race between Democrat Andy Beshear and incumbent Republican Matt Bevin. Cruz won his race but it was surprisingly close, while Beshear upset Bevin.
He said “many, many more” small teams of IT security people are investigating voting machine manipulation and finding it real.
“The voting systems in the U.S. and in Pennsylvania were built to be manipulated,” he said. “They’ve been used in elections around the world and stolen elections around the world in Venezuela, Italy, Argentina, Singapore, Bolivia (which is) closest two weeks ago.”
He said the systems are connected to the internet and to servers outside the United States.
He said there is no transparency as to how the voter information is processed or stored. He said the voting record is able to modified or delated by operators, administrators and outside threats. Operators can assign votes for write-in vote ballots, blank ballots or error ballots in large numbers that can be directed a particular candidate at the operators or supervisors discretion.
Waldron brought up the theft of USB drives from a Philadelphia election warehouse which we reported here.
He said he his experts think that possibly 1.2 million Pennsylvania votes were altered or fraudulent. He said only a detailed forensic analysis of the machines and software would truly show how many citizens had their civil rights violated.
Waldron described spike anomalies.
“These are events that where a numerical amount of votes are processed in a time period that’s not . . . mechanically possible under normal circumstances.”
There is a manufacturer’s specified rate of speed as to the number of ballots that can be imaged and processed, he noted.
On Election Day there was a spike of about 337,000 votes added in “one big batch” in Pennsylvania in 90 minutes.
“That’s an anomaly in the reporting. Normally, you would expect to see a smooth curve going up not any big spikes . . . That big spike that occurs there is a prime indicator of fraudulent voting,” he said.
There were several other spikes through the night. Taken together they represented about 577,000 votes for Biden and about 3,200 for Trump.
Waldron and Rudy Giuliani made a claim that does not hold up in that 1.8 million absentee ballots were requested but 2.5 million returned. It’s conclusive that far more than 2.5 million absentee ballots were requested.
Waldron’s error may be due to bad labeling on the Department of State’s website.
Another troubling tidbit comes from State Rep. Don Moul (R-91). Moul said (2:28:55) he tried to get a requirement that mail-in ballots be barcoded but was told by Gov. Wolf that such a provision would be subject to automatic veto if it should hit his desk. Why should Wolf object to such a provision? Why don’t the self-proclaimed “watchdogs” in the old media ask?
Another bombshell came from Sen. Mario M. Scavello (R-40) who said at the 2:35:29 mark the legislature did not vote for the new machines but was done at the mandate of the governor.
