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Commissioner Bob Phillipsโ€™ refused last week to reconsider his previous January 18 vote to remove the ballot drop box from the Courthouse. Having no curbside drop box poses an obstacle to older voters with handicaps such as my wife, who requires a cane and cannot tolerate standing in long lines. We will work around this impediment by obtaining authorization from the Election Board for me to deliver her ballot.

However, removing the drop box is a silly prank at best, and weak-spined pandering to local election conspiracy devotees at worst. Think about it โ€“ in order to illegally stuff ballots, a fraudster would need to take out the security camera without the guard noticing. But even before that, the fraudster would need to hack the voter rolls, find out non-voter names (lest the ballot be voided as a duplicate), and then steal their unique SURE system bar codes (not to mention forge signatures exactly). Our county elections director Sean Drasher has reported that thereโ€™s no evidence that anyone has ever successfully fooled this multi-layered election security system. There is, however, plenty of evidence that this issue is a sensationalistic โ€œlightning rod.โ€

If Commissioner Phillips were using plain evidence for making decisions, he would realize that there is actually more hard evidence for aliens than for drop box stuffing. The military finally released a trove of data in August documenting unexplained aerial phenomena (UFOs). Whistleblower David Grusch had testified in July about some โ€œbiologic materialโ€ being associated with the UFOs, not to mention other data being โ€œcovered up.โ€

So, instead of removing the drop box, shouldnโ€™t Commissioner Phillips respond to the more credible threat to elections from aliens by, say, removing the new radio tower from the 911 Center (a beacon for space travelers?) or issuing laser guns to poll security officers (the only way to stop a bad alien with a laser is a good guy with a laser)? Cโ€™mon, we should be making policy based on evidence and common sense, not fears of aliens and drop box conspiracies.

Dr. Duncan MacLean is a retired physician and South Lebanon Township resident. As a volunteer for several civic organizations, he has participated around Lebanon County in advocacy outreach at polls and in voter education and registration.

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