A voter, right, checks in with an election worker before casting her ballot in the Pennsylvania primary in Philadelphia, Tuesday, June 2, 2020.
Matt Rourke / AP Photo
Pennsylvania counts ballots after a light-on-drama primary
The Associated Press has called four races in which Democratic legislative incumbents lost.
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Marc Levy/The Associated Press -
Mark Scolforo/The Associated Press
Matt Rourke / AP Photo
A voter, right, checks in with an election worker before casting her ballot in the Pennsylvania primary in Philadelphia, Tuesday, June 2, 2020.
(Harrisburg) — Election officials faced a mountain of still-uncounted ballots Wednesday after a Pennsylvania primary held amid civil unrest, a pandemic, the introduction of new voting machines in some counties and the debut of mail-in balloting that pushed county bureaus to their limits.
The result of the highest-profile contests on the ballot were a foregone conclusion: President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, uncontested for their parties’ nominations, won their Tuesday primaries.
Gene J. Puskar / AP Photo
Chet Harhut, deputy manager, of the Allegheny County Division of Elections, wheels a dolly loaded with mail-in ballots, at the division of elections offices in downtown Pittsburgh Wednesday, May 27, 2020.
With the flood of mail-in votes still being counted, The Associated Press called three races in which incumbents lost, all of them in Democratic legislative primaries in Philadelphia: Sen. Larry Farnese and Reps. Maria Donatucci and Roni Green.
There was only one competitive primary among the statewide races: a six-way race in the Democratic primary for auditor general that the AP had not called by Wednesday morning. Candidates in the other two other statewide races on the ballot, attorney general and treasurer, were uncontested.
All 18 of the state’s members of the U.S. House are seeking reelection, although only two had primary opposition.
Both of them, Pittsburgh Democrat Mike Doyle and Bucks County Republican Brian Fitzpatrick, won their primaries. In the Legislature, all 203 House seats and half the 50-member Senate are up this year. Two state House members, Democrat Carolyn Comitta of Chester County and Republican Cris Dush of Jefferson County, won contested primaries for open Senate seats.
Primary voters also picked delegates and alternates for the two major parties’ presidential nominating conventions.
The lack of drama in the outcome of the presidential contests and the massive mail-in vote produced light in-person turnout throughout the state. With counting continuing Wednesday morning, turnout passed 1.6 million, or 19% of the state’s 8.6 million voters.
Kate Landis / WITF
A voter checks in at the Mount Joy Borough Municipal Office on June 2, 2020. Many polling places were equipped with plexiglass screens to minimize the chance of spreading coronavirus between poll workers and voters.
Ultimately, more than 1.8 million voters applied for a mail-in or absentee ballot, smashing expectations by state officials for the debut of the state’s new vote-by-mail law and drawing warnings that many contest results will be delayed well past election night.
Voters in some places dealt with late-arriving mail-in ballots and a dramatic consolidation of polling places in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Montgomery County to cope with the difficulty of recruiting poll workers fearful of the coronavirus.
Lawmakers voted to postpone the primary election from April 28 to avoid the height of Pennsylvania’s spike in coronavirus cases, and candidates and political parties had urged voters to cast ballots by mail.
Officials in Philadelphia and its suburbs, in particular, had been concerned that voters wouldn’t receive their ballots in time for the post office to return them in time.
Two heavily populated suburban Philadelphia counties on Tuesday won court decisions extending the counting of mail-in ballots, a day after Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, issued a similar order for Philadelphia and five counties that have experienced protests over George Floyd’s death.
In Bucks County, home to 461,000 registered voters, a judge ruled that the county can count any ballots that arrive by June 9, as long as they are postmarked by June 1. In Delaware County, home to 405,000 voters, a judge gave the county an extra 10 days to count the ballots of about 400 voters whose ballots had not been mailed to them before Tuesday.
Wolf’s order to extend the deadline for counting mail-in ballots for a week is limited to Philadelphia, Allegheny, Dauphin, Delaware, Erie and Montgomery counties, where his emergency declaration over the protests was active as of Monday.
Republican Party officials criticized Wolf’s order as usurping lawmakers’ authority and violating constitutional protections that ensure equal voting laws, but had not challenged it in court as of Wednesday. In 2012, then-Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, used the authority, allowing counties that had to close their election offices in the days before the election because of Superstorm Sandy to extend the deadline to accept absentee ballots.
Meanwhile Tuesday, long lines were reported in consolidated Philadelphia precincts made temporarily worse by voting machine mix-ups or malfunctions, and 22 counties were road-testing new paper-based voting machines, ordered by Wolf in 2018 as a bulwark against election meddling.
Despite the challenges, the Department of State said Tuesday night that the election had gone smoothly.
A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.
