Altoona Mirror. April 6, 2024

Last weekend’s front-page Mirror article “No gray area for mandated reporters” should have been a must-read for everyone, since virtually everyone has indirect or direct contact with children.

The article in question should have “opened a lot of eyes” regarding safeguards already in place to combat or address unseemly situations that could endanger or damage a child’s life and possibly have negative implications even after that child reaches adulthood.

However, the article also exposed possible issues that, if addressed, could help in the battle against dangerous people or situations.

For example, the article reviewed training requirements for people designated as mandated reporters — people who are required by law to report child abuse to ChildLine when they have reasonable cause to suspect that a child is being abused.

The reasonable response to the requirements currently in place is whether they are adequately comprehensive.

The fact is that they could be made better.

ChildLine is described as being part of a mandated statewide child protective services program designed to receive child abuse referrals and general concerns about child well-being. When information is received, ChildLine transmits it quickly to the appropriate investigating agency.

ChildLine is responsible for receiving verbal and electronic referrals 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The toll-free hotline is 1-800-932-0313.

Some mandated reporters must complete required training every five years or two years. It is not unreasonable to suggest that training be required every year.

For example, some, if not all, casinos require annual training for all employees each year on the same topics related to their operations and the state laws under which they operate — and, of course, their operations are not open to children.

But the training in question keeps those topics fresh in the minds of employees.

Shouldn’t training aimed at protecting children always be fresh in mandated reporters’ minds?

Meanwhile, according to last weekend’s article, not everyone who is a mandated reporter is required to receive mandated reporter training. Perhaps that is OK in many circumstances, but that needs to undergo a total re-examination, considering the scope of the child-abuse problem even here in the Southern Alleghenies region.

The case that is the main point of focus in last weekend’s article was just one despicable example of what has been witnessed in this region in recent years. No doubt some cases — perhaps much more serious cases — of abuse have never been reported and prosecuted.

The article in question made clear that in Pennsylvania child welfare is a county-administered and state-supervised system, and that every allegation of child abuse is investigated. However, that system is not beyond undergoing a total re-examination every five years or so to determine what might be improved, based on the kinds and number of cases surfacing.

Consider who would have imagined a case like the one on which last weekend’s article centered — a 12-year-old boy allegedly sexually assaulting other children on a school bus. It is maddening to think that the situation could have persisted for so long.

Yes, there must be no gray area for mandated reporters.

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LNP/LancasterOnline. April 7, 2024

We’re democracy nerds, so we love elections. We hope you do, too.

While we know campaigns are long and tedious — especially in presidential-election years — and so many political ads seem designed to either bore us or scare us to tears, elections offer us a vital opportunity to have our say. For too many Americans, the vote was hard-won, and we shouldn’t squander it.

Unlike the Nov. 5 general election, only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote in the April 23 primary. This is unfortunate because, especially in Lancaster County, where registered Republicans continue to outnumber registered Democrats, elections often are decided in the primary — and we believe it’s unfair for unaffiliated and third-party voters to have no voice in choosing the elected officials whose salaries they’ll pay. And, to add insult to injury, as we’ve noted before, their tax dollars help to pay for the primaries from which they are excluded.

So we’ll keep making the case for open primaries.

In the meantime, if you’re not registered with either of the two major parties, you still can register — but Monday is the last day to do so if you want to vote April 23 (go to vote.pa.gov ).

As the LNP ‘ LancasterOnline 2024 Primary Voters Guide pointed out Wednesday, “Democratic and Republican voters in Lancaster County are preparing to select candidates for state and national offices, including a U.S. senator and congressman, Pennsylvania House and Senate lawmakers, three state executives: attorney general, auditor general and treasurer; and, of course, the U.S. presidency.”

Both parties will choose delegates to their national presidential nominating conventions.

GOP voters will also select hundreds of regional committee members for the Republican Committee of Lancaster County. Those committee people are the ones who vet primary candidates and issue endorsements, which continue to carry weight among GOP primary voters. So the committee plays a critical role in actually determining who gets elected in Lancaster County.

While many of the intraparty races are uncontested, GOP voters in the 100th state House District will choose between incumbent House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler and Dave Nissley, a Sadsbury Township landscaper.

Now on to some other election-related matters.

Choose reliable sources

As Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s secretary of State — or secretary of the Commonwealth (they’re the same thing) — writes in a column published in this newspaper today, it’s imperative that we be “astute consumers of election information,” and that we guard against misinformation and disinformation.

To the list of reliable sources Schmidt provides, we’d add this newspaper’s excellent voters guide. It was rigorously reported and fact-checked by LNP ‘ LancasterOnline news journalists, and it offers a trove of information.

Now, and particularly as November nears, we all need to be on the lookout for deepfakes — videos, photos and robocalls that seem to be legitimate, but have been manipulated with artificial intelligence. Some deepfakes are so sophisticated that you’d swear that they’re real, but they’re not.

As Steven Sloman, a cognitive psychologist at Brown University, told the journal Science, content that’s repeated “becomes ingrained in people’s heads,” and even more so when it’s conveyed in images and video. So we may end up unintentionally sharing fake information. And this sows uncertainty about legitimate information.

If you sense something is “off” — or seems almost too perfect — it might be. So retain a healthy skepticism and don’t believe everything you see or hear. If you receive a robocall or text or email telling you that your polling place has been changed, check its veracity with the Lancaster County Voter Registration & Elections Office.

As Schmidt writes in his column, he is leading a new election threats task force to mitigate threats — including misinformation — to the election process.

While we need to be careful consumers of election information, please don’t buy into fearmongering about the legitimacy of our elections. County and state elections officials are working hard to protect the sanctity of your vote. Our votes are safe in their hands.

Mail-in voting

While disinformation and misinformation may seem uncontrollable, there are things you can control when it comes to voting, and among them is how you complete your mail-in ballot if that’s the voting method you choose.

Lancaster County elections officials have helpfully prepared videos ( lanc.news/electionvideos ) that will help you through the process of applying for, completing and returning mail-in ballots, and answer some common questions. We thank them for this excellent public service.

Be sure to place your completed ballot in the yellow secrecy envelope that reads “Official Election Ballot”; then place the yellow envelope in the white return envelope that bears the county elections office address. Sign the voter declaration on the back of the return envelope and date it correctly.

An accurate date is imperative. A 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel recently ruled 2-1 that requiring a date to be correctly written on the return envelope, as Pennsylvania does, is not a violation of a civil rights law aimed at prohibiting arbitrary barriers to voting.

Last week, the Lancaster County Board of Elections “formally approved a measure stipulating the window of allowable dates that can be written on mail-in ballots,” LNP ‘ LancasterOnline’s Tom Lisi reported. “Elections director Christa Miller said ballots must be dated between March 7, the day the county first sent out military and overseas ballots, and April 23, the day of the primary.”

It’s essential that you promptly complete and return your mail-in ballot; it must arrive at the county elections office by 8 p.m. April 23.

Recall that 268 Lancaster County votes in November’s municipal election were not counted because they were inexplicably, and inexcusably, delivered late by the U.S. Postal Service.

Don’t tempt fate or the vagaries of the Postal Service. Be sure to put a first-class stamp on the return envelope and mail it as quickly as possible, or drop it off to the county elections office in person.

As Lisi reported, voters can visit that downtown Lancaster office during business hours and apply in person for a mail-in ballot. “State law permits election staff to process the application on the spot and allow voters to fill out the ballot in the office,” he noted. “Voters can then put the ballot into a mail-ballot envelope and hand it back to the elections office in the same visit.”

Take note, though: April 16 is the last day to vote in person by mail ballot.

That’s Pennsylvania’s narrow version of “early voting.” It’s something, at least.

However we choose to cast our ballots, we should appreciate the wonder of our democracy. And we should vow to do everything we can to protect it.

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. April 6, 2024

State Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Centre, recently broke the charging port in his cell phone. (We won’t ask him how.) But when the manufacturer told him the part could not be repaired, he had no option but to buy a new phone. The replacement was more than a thousand dollars.

“Now, phones are a necessity, and especially so for residents in rural Pennsylvania,” Mr. Conklin said. “We cannot wait for manufacturers to take a long time to repair consumers’ devices at exponentially high costs.”

Mr. Conklin spoke outside a House Commerce Committee informational meeting discussing Senate Bill 744, Pennsylvania’s Right to Repair legislation. The Right to Repair movement argues, rightly, that because consumers own their products, they deserve to be able to get their products repaired (or to repair them themselves) at a reasonable price.

But as more and more products include proprietary parts, especially software, manufacturers have increasingly forced consumers to come to them for repairs and updates — or, as in the case of Mr. Conklin’s phone, to replace the product entirely.

SB 744 would require makers of “digital electronic equipment to make available to owners and independent repair providers, on fair and reasonable terms, documentation, parts and tools used to diagnose, maintain and repair digital electronic equipment.”

This is a good first step — and is worth passing into law — but the Senate’s proposal, sponsored by Mike Regan, R-Cumberland, can and should go further.

The legislation exempts some of the worst right-to-repair offenders: medical devices and agricultural equipment.

Medical devices may seem like a logical exception — after all, you don’t want a non-expert tinkering with an MRI machine before getting a scan. But during the COVID pandemic, onerous requirements that devices like ventilators be serviced only by the manufacturer kept many life-saving devices off-line. Designing devices that can be fixed by anyone with the proper training on the ground could be a matter of life and death.

As for agricultural equipment, behemoths like John Deere have made big profits by forcing farmers — who used to be the ultimate tinkerers — to pay for expensive, exclusive maintenance. High-tech tractors will even lock out their owners until a manufacturer’s representative puts in the right code to get back to harvesting. In an industry where a day’s delay can mean spoiling a year of work, the right to repair is essential.

After the manufacturer declined to fix his charging port, Mr. Conklin should have had the right to see if anyone else could fix it, saving him money and the landfill from electronic waste. If you can’t get something repaired on your own, did you ever really own it to begin with?