Rosita
Youngblood, Ghosts, and the Culture of Corruption
During
this election I have been having a little fun at Representative Youngblood's
expense by calling her a "ghostly presence" in our district. I don't think
anyone can be a good representative if he or she one does not come out and meet
the voters and community leaders. And Representative Youngblood rarely attends
community meetings and, to my knowledge, never goes door to door.
I have
also joked about the "haunted mansion" that is her office on Greene Street.
Because Representative Youngblood has no paid staff office, this beautiful
office has mostly been closed for over a year.
What I did
not know, however, is that ghosts can vote! As the
Philadelphia
Inquirer has reported in recent weeks, there is a common practice of legislators
using coins or wadded up pieces of paper to fix their voting machines so that
they are recorded as voting even when they are not present in the House of
Representatives chamber. In some cases, our Representatives have been recorded
as voting even when they were not present in Harrisburg.
This ghost
voting is a violation of House rules and a terrible practice. How can a
Representative adequately represent us if they are casting votes without knowing
what they are voting on?
We don't
know whether Rosita Youngblood has cast ghost votes. She has refused to answer
the questions of newspaper reporters. But we do know that she has helped other
Representatives cast ghost votes. As reported in the Inquirer, she was recently
seen doing so.
Rosita
Youngblood is part of what critics have called a "culture of corruption" in
Harrisburg. One way to begin to dismantle that culture of corruption
is to remove her from office.
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