This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

In Washington, President Donald Trump is crusading against mail voting – but in Harrisburg, a federal appeals court expanded the rights of people who choose to vote by mail this week when it ruled that ballots can no longer be discarded due to improper envelope dating. The requirement that ballot envelopes be correctly dated has long bedeviled commonwealth voters, thousands of whose legitimate votes have been unconstitutionally disenfranchised due to the erstwhile mandate.

You’ll be on cloud nine staying at this Pocono hotel. The Skytop Lodge, located seven miles from Promised Land State Park and 12 miles from I-84, earned the No. 1 spot on SleepJunkie’s rankings for best hotels in the country for sleep quality. The resort said its natural setting and location in the heart of the Pocono Mountains makes the 5,500 acres’ worth of accommodations particularly amenable to sheep-counting.

Subu Vedam, a 64-year-old State College man who has served more than 40 years of a life sentence for a killing he maintains he didn’t commit, has had his murder conviction vacated by a Centre County judge, according to the Centre Daily Times.  The judge found that county prosecutors violated his due process rights and granted Vedam a new trial.

If Pennsylvanians are warier about getting scammed lately, there’s a reason: The region is reeling from a series of shifty schemes. In Philadelphia, the longtime owner of Society Hill Loan pleaded guilty to trafficking a mind-boggling $23 million in stolen goods between 2019 and 2023. Meanwhile, Lancaster County police nabbed a local 20-something for swindling his former high-school classmates out of thousands of dollars they paid for Philadelphia Eagles season tickets he claimed he’d obtain through his job at ESPN Bet – but which never materialized.

The bus is not going round and round in this school district. Cumberland Valley parents, from elementary school to high school, were notified this week – the beginning of the district’s school year – that bus routes had been canceled due to bus and driver shortages. The last-minute cancellations forced families to ad-lib arrangements to get the kids to school on time.

Heather Honey, a Lebanon County-based activist who has peddled erroneous voting statistics supporting President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, has been appointed to a senior role overseeing election infrastructure at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Election experts fear that Honey’s appointment is anything but sweet – and that it signals a “dangerous trend” that could erode public trust in elections.