High-stakes Pa. judicial races, mail-in voting to boost election turnout, experts predict

Voter turnout typically craters in the year after a presidential election, but experts predict it will be higher than usual Tuesday because of high-stakes judicial retention races and the ease of mail-in voting.

Allegheny County Elections Director Dave Voye estimates that about 35% of the county’s registered voters will cast ballots in this election. That would be up from 33% in 2021, 24% in 2017 and 21% in 2013 — all in years following a presidential election.

In Westmoreland County, Scott Ross, director of elections and technology, predicted turnout of about 30%. That would be down from 36% in 2021, but up from 27% in 2017 and 18% in 2013, records show.

In 2021, the Westmoreland ballot featured contested countywide races for district attorney, coroner, prothonotary and clerk of courts. This year, Republicans running for those offices and register of wills do not have any opponents.

“It’s kind of quiet. There’s not a whole lot of noise out there,” Ross said.

Voye said he estimates that Allegheny County has received a turnout bump of at least 5% from mail-in voting compared to elections prior to 2020, when no-excuse, mail-in voting was first allowed.

As of Thursday, Allegheny County voters had returned about 88,000 of roughly 146,000 mail-in ballots, according to Voye. He expects voters to ultimately return 110,000 to 120,000 of those ballots.

About 20,000 of the 33,000 mail-in ballots requested in Westmoreland had been returned as of Wednesday afternoon, Ross said.

Voye said he anticipates slightly higher turnout than in 2021 based on “the hype surrounding the Supreme Court (retention) races.” The county also has seven contested races for Allegheny County Council, including one countywide race for an at-large seat. Ballots also will feature local races, including ones for municipal office, school board and district judge.

Three Democratic justices on Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court — Christine Donohue of Pittsburgh, David Wecht of Indiana Township and Kevin Dougherty of Philadelphia — are up for retention votes. All three are completing their first 10-year term.

Since retention elections were created in 1968, only one justice up for a retention vote has failed to be retained — and that was in 2005. The elections tend to be lopsided in favor of retaining justices. Rarely have they attracted much attention.

That hasn’t been the case this year. Voters have been inundated by ads and mailers as the candidates and outside groups have spent millions of dollars campaigning. Spending on television ads alone had surpassed at least $9.1 million as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

In 2005, Justices Russell Nigro and Sandra Schultz Newman were up for retention votes amid backlash over pay raises approved in the middle of the night for all three branches of the state government, including the judiciary. Nigro and Newman reportedly spent a combined $800,000 during their campaigns. A review for the American Judges Association described Nigro’s fundraising as “unprecedented and controversial” for a retention race.

While Newman was retained with 54% of the vote, Nigro collected 49% to come up short.

This year’s Supreme Court retention elections don’t feature a singular controversial issue such as the pay raise, but they offer a rare opportunity to “remake the court,” said Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.

Currently, five of the Supreme Court’s seven justices are Democrats, while the remaining two are Republicans. If Donohue, Wecht and Dougherty all came up short in their retention bids, new elections would be held that could shift the balance of power.

“The polarization and acrimony that we’ve seen in other political races has finally caught up to these retention races,” Yost said.

Kevan Yenerall, a political science professor at PennWest University in Clarion, added: “We live in a hyperpolarized, hypercompetitive environment where there isn’t much separation (between the number of Democrats and Republicans in Pennsylvania), so it makes everything seem existential.

“These elections are usually ho-hum, just ambient noise. But there’s nothing ambient about politics these days in Pennsylvania and across the country. It’s a reflection of how deeply divided we are. The stakes are just so high.”

Commonwealth Court Judge Michael Wojcik of Fox Chapel and Superior Court Judge Alice Beck Dubow of Philadelphia, both Democrats, also are up for retention votes.

There also are contested races for seats on both of those courts, with Republican Matt Wolford of Erie County facing Democrat Stella Tsai of Philadelphia for Commonwealth Court, and Republican Maria Battista of Clarion County, Democrat Brandon Neuman of Washington County and Liberal Party member Daniel Wassmer of Pike County running against each other for Superior Court.