Over the past two weeks, the Sun-Gazette has been awash with reports of the inevitable. The Great Recount Hoax has at last wended its way to Lycoming County, after disastrous tryouts in other venues. Sadly, our County Commissioners have given ear service to this political theater, diminishing, I believe, their obligation to office in the process.Recount: a Republican poobah comes before them, is allowed to shred the county’s Office of Voter Services (without a suggestion of impropriety), and then offers his own “petition” with “around 1,000” Lycoming County signatories (to what??) as some sort of evidence of malfeasance. Not withstanding my suspicion that in a county whose Trumpian base acquires most of its “facts” from radio folks named Glenn, Clay, Buck and “Dr. Gorka,” it is likely that one could get as many signatures to affirm that the earth is, indeed, flat, and that the “apparent” roundness of the planet is a Deep State plot designed somehow to rob us of our “rights.” And guns! And freedom! It goes on and on. Enough with the survey nonsense, already.

But, alas, No! In Tuesday’s paper, we learn further details of an effort to force a recount here. And this one is a beauty! Audit the Vote PA (which CEO Toni Shuppe describes as a “collection of everyday moms who saw what happened in the 2020 election and knew something wasn’t right”) conducted a “canvas of the (Lycoming) county” and discovered an astounding 48% “discrepancy rate” regarding voter registration! Gosh, when those everyday moms thought something wasn’t right, they weren’t kidding. That is, until you look at the Audit the Vote PA numbers and methodology. Across the vastness of our county, these Inquiring Minds “knocked on” a total of 346 doors, and actually spoke to a little more than half of the people whose houses they visited! The Audit giddily boasts that “72 of those 149 showed an anomaly.” If you hold in abeyance momentarily what it means to “show an anomaly,” the co-interpreter of this canvasing study, a “former Army intelligence officer,” goes on to conclude that “there are about 4000 cases of fraudulent votes in Lycoming County alone.” Oh . . . of those 149 people across the county who talked with Audit the Vote PA, many were not the actual voters themselves! So lax was this canvas methodology that it considered the commentary of “spouses, parents, tenants, roomates and children” who spoke to them as the testimony of the actual voters in question!

Even better, according the Sun-Gazette reporting, the Audit the Vote PA report “doesn’t rely on specific examples of election fraud.” Perhaps because you cannot cite what you cannot demonstrate exists! Meanwhile, the AP reports Pennsylvania Senate Republicans renewed their original no-bid contract with an unnamed entity to “extend their inquiry into the state’s 2020 election.” Original contract cost: $485,115. Extension contract cost: Undisclosed. Put it all on Mastriano’s Visa Card! Your tax dollars at work, right here!

OK . . . so maybe it is time for a recount, of sorts. Let’s begin by RECOUNT-ing this:

Recount: it has been 563 days since the November 2020 election loss that humiliated Donald Trump. During that time, his enablers have unsuccessfully trotted out discovery motions in well over 60 state and federal courtrooms across the fruited plain, before many judges appointed by Trump himself. Not even Trump’s Supreme Court would touch Texas’s petition for a hearing.

Recount: the infamously inept Cyber Ninja’s audit of the 2020 Maricopa County (AZ) election, despite its Republican initiation and Trump’s funding, actually uncovered more votes for Biden than he had originally earned!

What is so disappointing here is that elected officials, our County Commissioners included, are willing to entertain Trump’s never-ending quest for vengeance. A blatant broad brush to cover the absence of demonstrable evidence is a vestige of the 1950’s, and a reminder of yet another sad, hubristic politician. Shame on all our elected officials if they allow themselves to be sucked into this vortex of Trumpism. Shame on us if we continue to support that backward-looking, non-productive behavior.

STEPHEN HUDDY

Williamsport

Submitted by Virtual Newsroom