Election day 2023 reports thread

[Deminpenn]

It has been a remarkably quiet election season here. Of course there've been attack ads on local TV for the open state supreme court seat, the Allegheny county executive and Allegheny county DA, but those haven't even swamped the airwaves. There weren't many mailers arriving in my mail box either.

I was voter number 20 at my precinct around 7:30 this morning. Here in western PA, the focus seems to be very local as the candidates for the marquee race, the open seat on the state supreme court, are both from eastern PA (Phila and MontCo).

There are county wide elections for county commissioners and county row offices. But the biggest draw is probably the local school boards. In my school district, the reform candidate already won both the D and R primary and thus is unopposed. I stopped and talked to the school board candidate before voting to let him know he had my vote. We talked a bit about the book banning effort led by an incumbent member who's up for re-election but is in the adjoining region. We agreed that common sense and practicality should prevail, not one person trying to foist their personal agenda on everyone else. That just seemed to be the overall vibe from the folks outside soliciting for their candidates - out with the crazy.

I'd expect normality (this is a conservative county even though Ds might have a registration edge) to prevail and the county wide incumbents to win re-election and the R judicial candidates will probably be the top vote getters for the courts.

[Demovictory9]

1. Frustrating that Dems have edge in registrations but dont.vote

[Deminpenn]

2. No, they vote, lots just have never bothered to change

their party affliliation to R. If they did, Rs would probably have the registration edge or would be very close.

[Demovictory9]

3. Oh..ok

[BumRushDaShow]

4. BWAH!! If this holds, there will be only 1 Republican left on Philly's City Council

For the at-large seats - top 7 vote-getters win, with 2 seats that must be reserved for a "minority party". In the past, that "minority party" was the Republican party but now with the Working Families Party in the mix, they took one of the seats 4 years ago and look to be talking the 2nd one this year if this holds (snapshot taken ~12:44 am EST 11/8/23)!

https://philadelphiaresults.azurewebsites.us/ResultsSW.aspx?type=PCC&map=CTY



(with 95% of the vote)

The other 10 Councilmanic District seats have 9 (D)s and a returning 1 (R).

[BumRushDaShow]

5. 96% in and the at-large Philly City Council seat tally is still holding, kicking all GOP out

[Deminpenn]

6. Dan McCaffery elected to open PA Supreme Court seat

That maintains the Ds 5-2 majority.

In Allegheny county D Sara Innamorato defeated Joe Rockey, her R challenger. Zappala kept his seat as DA.

In my county, all pretty much went as I expected with all but 1 incumbent (D) winning in the county row offices. All 3 incumbent county commissioners were re-elected. The incumbent DA lost in a squeaker to his conservative Dem opponent by less than 700 votes. In my specific school board election, the crazy incumbents all lost, most of them in the primary, but the one who made it through on the R side was defeated last night. In the other crazy vs not crazy school board election in South Side Beaver, the crazies won. That district is largely rural and extremely conservative, not an especially surprising result.

Looks like there was a good deal of ticket-splitting which was normal for this part of PA before Trump. Dems again outnumbered Rs in mailed ballots, but we need to work on getting Dems who don't vote by mail to the polls on election or get more to vote by mail.

With the closeness of the Allegheny county executive election and the ticket splitting, IMHO, that signals voters want responsible and pragmatic government that works and isn't caught up in a highly partisan agenda.