Philadelphia has been found guilty of Major League ballot stuffing.
But in a good way.
With the rallying cry, "Vote early, vote often," Mayor Nutter and Gov. Rendell led a four-day campaign last week to drum up Internet votes to elect Phillies' outfielder Shane Victorino to this year's National League All-Star Team.
Victorino got 15.2 million votes, a record for the 8-year-old Final Vote competition. He will be on the roster for tomorrow night's All-Star game in St. Louis.
Even taking into account the likelihood that diehard fans here and in Victorino's native Hawaii spent long hours at computers clicking to register multiple votes, that's still a stunning electoral turnout. Politicians like Nutter and Rendell could be forgiven for being wistful about how hard they would have to work to get even a fraction of the votes Victorino got.
But to paraphrase the immortal Babe referring to Herbert Hoover, Shane is having a better year than they are. *
