Election category, Page 116
These Pa. counties won’t start counting mail ballots until Wednesday
Spotlight PA is an independent, non-partisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. This article is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. Officials in Pennsylvania...
Gov. Tom Wolf urges patience as vote count continues
Gov. Tom Wolf and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said Tuesday night that there were only isolated problems at the polls and no significant issues reported during Tuesday election. They also reiterated people to be patient as the votes are tallied. “I encourage all of us to take a deep...
Davanzo defeats Prah in rematch for 58th District state House seat
Republican incumbent state Rep. Eric Davanzo has defeated Democrat Robert Prah Jr. in the race for a full two-year term representing the 58th state House District in central and southern Westmoreland County, according to unofficial results from Westmoreland County. With all votes counted, Davanzo received slightly more than 63 percent...
Reschenthaler maintains commanding lead to retain seat in 14th Congressional District
Republican incumbent Rep. Guy Reschenthaler of Peters defeated Democratic challenger Bill Marx in his bid to hold on for a second term representing the newly formed 14th Congressional District, which includes a large portion of western Westmoreland County, along with portions of Greene, Washington and Fayette. Though some mail-in ballots...
Republican challenger leads longtime incumbent state Rep. Joe Petrarca
Republican challenger Jason Silvis maintained a 6-point lead over 13-term incumbent state Rep. Joe Petrarca on Thursday morning in Pennsylvania’s 55th state House District, according to unofficial and incomplete returns. Silvis, a film stuntman, has collected 53.1% of the votes counted compared with Petrarca’s 46.9%, a margin of about 1,800...
Ziccarelli holds slight lead in attempt to unseat Pa. Sen. Jim Brewster in race for 45th District
Republican challenger Nicole Ziccarelli maintained a slim lead over incumbent state Sen. Jim Brewster in a race for Pennsylvania’s 45th State Senate District, according to incomplete and unofficial election results. Ziccarelli had received 50.67% of the 124,396 votes counted, leading Brewster by 1,658 votes. Early election returns Tuesday night showed...
Covid-infected family votes at Westmoreland County Courthouse under special protocols
Westmoreland County elections officials took special precautions Tuesday as a family infected with the coronavirus appeared at the courthouse to cast ballots in the 2020 election. Two parents and their adult son called ahead to make arrangements to vote, said Commissioner Doug Chew. “I was the designated covid commissioner and...
Kim Ward leads Tay Waltenbaugh as first votes are counted
Incumbent Kim Ward was holding on tight to her 39th District State Senate seat Wednesday afternoon, leading opponent Tay Waltenbaugh by more than 50,600 votes. Ward, a 64-year-old Hempfield Republican who has served in the Senate for 12 years, had about 70% of the votes with 144 out of 206...
State row office elections may hang on mail-in ballot count
Early returns suggested two incumbent Democratic state row officers — Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and state Treasurer Joe Torsella — could be in trouble in their reelection bids. With about 32% of the vote tallied Tuesday evening, Shapiro was lagging Allegheny County Republican challenger Heather Heidelbaugh by 45% to...
Republican challenger Sean Parnell’s lead over U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb narrows
Republican challenger Sean Parnell led U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb late Wednesday afternoon in the high-profile 17th Congressional District race, but Lamb narrowed the lead throughout the day, according to unofficial and incomplete returns. As of 4 p.m., Parnell had collected 53.2% of the votes counted compared to Lamb’s 46.8%, a...
GOP’s Tommy Tuberville defeats U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, flips Alabama seat
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Former college football coach Tommy Tuberville has recaptured a U.S. Senate seat for Republicans by defeating Sen. Doug Jones in Alabama. Jones had widely been considered the Senate’s most endangered Democrat. Republicans had made recapturing the once reliably conservative seat a priority in 2020. Tuberville, who has...
Incumbent state Sen. Joe Pittman overwhelms Democratic challenger Tony DeLoreto
State Sen. Joe Pittman, R-Indiana, collected three times as many votes as his Democratic challenger in his bid for reelection, according to unofficial returns Wednesday. To make matters worse for challenger Tony DeLoreto, the Indiana restaurateur was recently diagnosed with covid-19 and could not go to the polls or conduct...
Democrats losing paths to Senate control as GOP hangs onVideo
WASHINGTON — Hopes fading for Senate control, Democrats had a disappointing election night as Republicans swatted down an onslaught of challengers and fought to retain their fragile majority. Several races remained undecided into Wednesday and at least one headed to a runoff in January. It was a jarring outcome for...
Pennsylvania vote goes smoothly, but tallying may take timeVideo
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania voters turned out in large numbers Tuesday for an election that produced few of the glitches some had feared, leaving in their wake a mountain of ballots that will have to be counted in the coming days amid intense national scrutiny. The battleground state’s decision to greatly...
Georgia Republican who supports QAnon wins U.S. House seat
ATLANTA — Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who expressed racist views and support for QAnon conspiracy theories in a series of online videos, has won a U.S. House seat representing northwest Georgia. Her candidacy was bolstered by President Donald Trump, who has called her a “future Republican Star.” Greene was heavily...
Pennsylvania emerges as online misinformation hotspot on election day
A single voting machine jammed for just minutes Tuesday morning at a precinct in Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton — but misleading posts on Facebook and Twitter claimed multiple machines there were down for hours. Pennsylvania emerged as a hotspot for online misinformation on Election Day. Facebook and Twitter scrambled...
News outlets preach caution as election results arrive
Media outlets preached patience as the first Election Day results in the hard-fought campaign between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden came in, even as it ran counter to their instincts. A stressed populace and flood of early voting had many observers worried about a chaotic counting process, leading...
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wins reelection, but control of Senate at stake
WASHINGTON — Republicans fought to keep control of the Senate on Tuesday in a razor-close contest against a surge of Democrats challenging President Donald Trump’s allies across a vast political map. Polls started closing in key states where some of the nation’s most well-known senators were on the ballot. In...
2020 election results from across Western Pennsylvania
All that’s left is the counting. And it could take a little while. Polls in Pennsylvania closed at 8 p.m. on what was a mostly orderly election day. Voters were greeted by long lines well before the polls opened at 7 a.m., and there reportedly was steady turnout across Western...
Election updates: After win in Pa., Biden captures Nevada as wellVideo
This is the latest on the presidential election between incumbent Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden: 12:13 p.m. Biden has won Nevada, adding to his Electoral College victory over Trump. Biden clinched Nevada on Saturday afternoon, shortly after he won the presidency by taking Pennsylvania. Trump had made a strong...
George Floyd’s brother rallies voters on Election Day in New York
NEW YORK — The murmurs spread quickly among the poll workers late Tuesday morning at a Brooklyn neighborhood station: George Floyd’s brother was present. A few came up to Terrence Floyd, whose brother George died in the custody of Minneapolis police, sparking protests for racial justice across the nation. “Keep...
Future voting rights, marijuana laws at stake in states
The growing push to legalize marijuana was being put to another test Tuesday in both left- and right-leaning states as voters also decided a variety of state ballot measures affecting their own voting rights in future elections. A total of 120 proposed state laws and constitutional amendments were on the...
‘Vote and get home,’ anxious voters say on Election Day
She carefully planned a five-hour drive to the polling place in her Tennessee hometown to vote on Election Day. She considered the traffic, the weather, the surging coronavirus pandemic and — something she never imagined having to contemplate — the possibility of civil unrest in the aftermath of an American...
FBI investigates robocalls warning voters to ‘stay home’
TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan — Voters across the U.S. received anonymous robocalls in the days and weeks before Election Day urging them to “stay safe and stay home” — an ominous warning that election experts said could be an effort to scare voters into sitting out the election. The FBI is...
Paper ballots, scanners surprise some voters in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties
Mario Taliani of Arnold was surprised when he went to vote Tuesday — not by anything on the ballot, but by the ballot itself. Taliani went into his polling location at Roy A. Hunt Elementary School expecting to vote on an electronic machine. He didn’t know they had been replaced...
