Chaos In PA Poll As Small Town Voters Turned Away!

The electoral process has been thown into chaos across wide swathes of Pennsylvania today as Democratic voters cast their ballots in the Keystone State’s much ballyhooed primary. Reports are coming in that officials are turning away thousands of would-be voters, especially in the western part of the state regarded as vital to Hillary Clinton.

“There’s no denying that we have a problem,” admitted Justin Case, Deputy Assistant-in-Chief of the Pennsylvania Electoral Board which oversees the process statewide. “A great many voters in all those small towns for which we’re justifiably famous are insisting on carrying their guns into the voting centers. This is in clear breach of a late 18th century local statute which bars anyone but signatories to the Declaration of Independence and their direct descendants to the third generation from bearing arms ‘within 2 furlongs, 8 chains and 3 perches’ of any properly constituted balloting area.”


In the town of Bitterton, acknowledged far and wide as the buckle on the Pennsylvania ‘rust belt’, the line of frustrated voters stretched over two hundred yards down Ram’s Hackle (formerly Main) Street as far as the now-derelict Sour Grapes bar which was in its hey-day a favorite watering-hole for workers from the 75 local steel mills and four dozen coal mines which have since gone to The Wall, an area in northern China that has proved a favorite spot for heavy industry to relocate. The empty plants and warehouses have all since been converted into churches while the strip clubs, casinos and five star restaurants of the boom times are now shooting ranges and bowling alleys.

A grim-faced Earl “Early Bird” Earls, 75, who lost his job as Head Coker in Robust Iron & Steel twenty six years ago, spoke for many when he said “This ain’t right”. Choking back the bile, the burly 350 pound great-grandfather held up his double barreled, pump action shotgun, saying “I’m exercising my Second Amendment rights and there ain’t no one gonna make me lay down my weapon so as I can mark a ballot.”

His wife, Muriel, a wizened, wispy 77 year old, wept as she told reporters that she just couldn’t let go of her .32 Smith & Wesson revolver. “No matter how hard I try i just can’t part with it. It’s like it’s glued to my hand.”

“I know what she means,” echoed Wilbur Eideldaze, an unemployed 47 year old machinist who has lost twelve jobs in succession as plant after plant closed around him. “ I find myself reaching for my Winchester every time I step carefully off my creaky porch. I just can’t stop myself. It's like it’s deer hunting season the whole year round. But,” he added wryly, “without the free meat.”

In a bizarre incident over the county line in nearby Hix Neck a man in his fifties collapsed and died of an apparent coronary while attempting to evade watchful election monitors by wriggling through a small window in one of the utility rooms in the voting centre. According to as yet unconfirmed rumors the paramedics who arrived within minutes were unable to prise the gleaming pearl-handled Colt 45 from his cooling, freshly dead hand.

His name has been withheld until local trackers succeed in locating his next of kin who are believed to be itinerant preachers among the primitive hill country folk of Mc Kean and Potter counties in the remote northern reaches of the state.

In a further twist that is sure to add to the confusion Scranton judge, Ruth Ginsberg-Kennedy-Bader, has granted the ACLU an order mandating that all voters in rural areas and in towns, townships and “agglomerated communities” with populations of less than 15,000 be bodysearched “to ascertain whether they are transporting, carrying or otherwise transferring contraband material” to the ballot. Gated communities are explicitly exempted in the court order.

ACLU spokesperson, So Su Me, described the measure as “vitally necessary in the ongoing battle to ensure the separation of church and state.” Almost immediately the polls opened many incidents had come to light, she confirmed, of citizens from disgruntled small towns, outlying areas and “mountainous terrain” attempting “to gain admission to voting centers while in possession of Bibles, prayer books, hymnals and even rosary beads” which were sometimes “brazenly held quite openly in their hands,” but more often “cunningly concealed in pockets or handbags. One woman even had ‘God Bless America’ embroidered on a particularly ghastly red, white and blue padded windbreaker,” asserted an incredulous Ms Me.

Speaking from On High, Saskatchewan, where he has gone for a speaking engagement, ACLU Chief, Hugh Sczmuk, noted that while the organization is “unreservedly committed to the full and free exercise of the franchise by every citizen – and hopefully in the not too distant future by the immigrant community as well, irrespective of legal status – we are above all else determined to utterly remove all religion from the public square. The complete sequestration of all forms of theistic belief to the privacy of the bathroom is the paramount principle upon which the nation was founded. The Constitution has quite clear emanations on this.”

Newly appointed Clinton Campaign manager, Ann E. Oake-Leigh, described the New York Senator as “shocked, dismayed, horrified and dadblamed hornswoggled” at the fact that “simple, God-fearing, chronically unemployed yet hard-working Americans were being compelled to choose between the Second Amendment and casting their vote for an experienced candidate who will be ready from Day One to launch nuclear Armageddon to protect the way of life of the simple, God-fearing, chronically idle yet vastly wealthy people of the United Arab Emirates, especially our good friends in Dubai.”

The Obama camp, meanwhile, expressed satisfaction with its get out the vote effort. “Our voters are serenely lining up waiting to experience the transformative power of casting a vote for the next President,” a highly placed source within the Campaign said. “They’re passing the time reciting The Speech to each other and pointing out the places where they felt particular rapture at the time and discovering new sublimities to concelebrate.”

The Senator himself, while visiting twelve widely scattered polling places simultaneously, declared that he was “feeling quietly zen about [his] prospects”. When asked by a reporter to explain his relationship with unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayres, Obama replied that the question was “so bitter, so clinging” that it amounted to the “uttering of a stereotype” that made him “cringe”.

At a nod the Secret Service agents frisked the reporter for weapons. None were found but a driver’s license identified the man as Stephan Gorgeopolous. On hearing this, the Candidate merely shook his head slowly and murmured “Timeo Danaos et rogationes donatas ferentes” (I fear Greeks bearing gifted questions).

In other news Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, met with senior advisers at Campaign Headquarters in Glote, a Phoenix, Arizona suburb, where in a re-enactment of an ancient Apache ceremony called sh’ah dihn froid they rubbed their hands together vigorously as they intoned an obscure animist chant (the meaning of which is lost in the mists of time):

“The more the Donkey kicks, the louder the Elephant trumpets!”