Get out the vote this year. It’s worth it to try to overcome disenfranchisement. And beware assertions that there’s a nee to “fix” election law; that could just lead to fixed elections.
Christine Donohue, David Wecht, and Kevin M. Dougherty are all Democrats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court who are up for retention reelection in November 2025.
Pennsylvania reporters have been doing Both Sides PR in promoting the idea of Republicans “transforming” the PA Supreme Court this year. And that would of course mean that the entire legal and political system in Pennsylvania would adhere to MAGA, kowtow to Trumpism, advance the interests of extremist right-wing christian nationalism, bow to the fossil fuel industry and tech tycoon interests, undermine consumer interests of Pennsylvania residents, and likely thwart democracy itself, even at the local level.
Bucks County Beacon put out a video warning of the importance of this election: “Pennsylvania Voters Ignore November State Supreme Court Election At Their Own Peril”, and I think that’s accurate. It’s not an understatement to say that the PA Supreme Court affects the daily lives of all Pennsylvania residents, especially in this time of turbulent authoritarian chaos from the federal government.
There has already been rumbling by the so-called election integrity lobby to change election law in Pennsylvania ahead of critical elections here in 2025 and 2026. “Election integrity” Both Sides-ing PR seems to crop of everywhere. An editorial in the “progressive perspective” independent media outlet, Bucks County Beacon, seemed to assert the idea that there is bipartisan “new consensus” on getting strict “voter ID” laws in PA, when most people I know who vote Democrat absolutely don’t want these Voter ID laws. We’ve been all through this and how to not disenfranchise people, and to not make it an illegal poll tax, we’d have to go through great lengths to make sure everyone could get the ID needed, when they already have the voter registration card, that they already had to present ID in order to get. Haven’t we been through enough with the REAL ID madness this year? There’s a reason this idea around “Voter ID” has failed many times in PA, and that’s because people don’t like it and know it’s redundant and not necessary. Yet Pennsylvania political reporters seem to constantly want to prove their Both-Sidesing chops, and try to position themselves as if they’re somehow above politics and mere humans, by wielding the term “partisan” as a slur, and even succumb to strawmanning to prove they’re doing high test both-sidesing.
And the authors of that op-ed in the Bucks County Beacon seemed to be pushing that at least an “update” of the election law in Pennsylvania is needed. It’s framed as a supposed need to “modernize” elections in a “bipartisan” manner. But why try to fix what’s not broken right now with democracy in jeopardy? Unless you actually want to open the door to those who want to break it or otherwise manipulate election processes or at least undermine confidence in the election process.
Frankly going back to the old school paper ballots everywhere would probably help win people back from various real concerns as well as mere conspiracy theories about “hacked” voting. But this op-ed actually seemed keen that previously abandoned legislation could have mandated electronic pollbooks and doing away with paper ballots altogether. This is when Pennsylvanians have for years been concerned about having a papertrail to verify election results in Pennsylvania. The piece was kind of lamenting that the Election Code rewrite vetoed by Dem Governor Tom Wolf would’ve restricted dropboxes.
Why are people so interested in restricting mail ballot drop boxes? Well probably because it makes it harder for some people to vote.
In 2024, in Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA if you’re nasty) the Luzerne County manager was trying to remove dropboxes for mail voting over “concerns for illegal activities”, and I immediately wondered if this was an attempt to target working class minorities in Hazleton – which is notorious for anti-immigrant legislation in the past. The Luzerne County manager reversed the decision after a lawsuit was filed and the PA Attorney General sent a warning letter. Drop-boxes have also been a MAGA Qanon talking point of manufactured controversy, which unfortunately Democratic politicians have sometimes been duped into promoting right-wing dropbox conspiracy fictions.
So you’ll excuse me if I’m skeptical about “bipartisan updates” to election law being A Good Thing.
The fact is people like mail voting, people like drop boxes, people like paper ballots with a way to verify election results. So the unnecessary hurdles of Voter ID wasn’t the only poison pill that was crammed into that “bipartisan” attempt to change election law. It would’ve been a shitshow if that piece of “bipartisan” crap passed.
And that op-ed, written by a PA reporter and a writer for the org Votebeat, actually cited a stipulation about lanterns that is supposedly an “archaic requirement” to provide light at polling places, (Because the term “lanterns” is supposedly outdated?), and therefore supposedly needs to be removed, and that is the reason why they think the busy state legislature should start messing with election law in PA in 2025.
But why wouldn’t you need a source of light at a polling place?
Lighting is not an outdated need. What difference does it make if you call it a lantern or a lamp or light fixtures? And yes, the authors of this piece actually suggested “getting rid of” that altogether. They suggested this I guess because the word “lantern” seemed old-fashioned to them? It’s just the sort of thing that people might not think through like they should. And this isn’t the first time I’ve come across this type of unthinking poison pill pitfall in a proposed bill, such as the right-to-mask bills that would’ve created mask bans and would’ve actually mandated unmasking.
Daylight Savings Time ends November 2, 2025, and Election Day is November 4, 2025, and so sunset is 453pm US Eastern Standard Time on that day in eastern Pennsylvania. That’s before 5pm in places like Philadelphia Pennsylvania, when the polls are likely busiest in the evenings in working people neighborhoods. Imagine the chaos leading to potential disenfranchisement when unscrupulous Republicans in charge of elections and polling places are by law not required to provide lights at the polls, where they know that working class people may have trouble going to the polls during the daylight hours.
You may think this sounds alarmist, extreme, like this could never happen, surely common sense would prevail, right? Maybe this would seem like an overreaction a few years ago, but now? When they’ve actually tried to pass laws to prevent people handing out water to dehydrated people waiting in line to cast ballots in Georgia. The same law that was struck down by a judge, apparently attempted to force people to put their birth date on the outside of ballot envelopes. So I’m not sure why anyone would assume anything at all is a bridge too far after the J6 insurrection, the pardoning of all the rioters, the Trump administration hiring the J6 insurrectionist who encouraged rioters to kill police officers to work at the Justice Dept., the takeover of school boards by religious far right extremists and shenanigans around elections in Lancaster County Pennsylvania, and the subsequent surprise win by a Democrat in backlash which probably made some heads explode… After all that, do you really think that a “bipartisan update” of election law won’t open the door to sabotage traps, that maybe will look like just bipartisan incompetence, that will wind up later maybe being described the way a lawsuit described attempts at gerrymandering in North Carolina: “The General Assembly targeted predominantly Black voting precincts with surgical precision throughout the state in drawing and enacting the 2023 Plans…” It’s not like Republicans have a history of restraining themselves and being reasonable, let’s be honest about this.
And without mandating lighting at polling places, and allowing dropboxes, you will open the door for Republican controlled counties to have polling locations in places like Hazleton Pennsylvania to be shrouded in darkness while voters have no mail voting dropboxes.
In an uphill battle, you don’t head back down the hill.
Personally I think because of all the disenfranchisement that’s very real already, as well as the vague concerns both whipped up or just imagined, we need to work harder to get more people to get out the vote in order to overcome that. And these “election law update” lobbyists Both-Sidesing the issue just serve to undermine such a get out the vote effort. Because the simple fact is that election laws in Pennsylvania are not actually The Problem with our political situation. One bigger problem is the PR polluted information landscape that’s been muddied with misinformation, and in some cases disinformation, or even just malinformation. And connected to that is the problem of the journalists prioritize Both-Sidesing over analyzing the issue and then informing the public of looming danger, even if you have to take a side to do that. In a world where the journalist thinks their role is to float above the public and talk down to us, right and wrong becomes the same thing; life or death equally desirable.
Someone needs to have the fortitude to confront these people with media critique who has more reach than me, but nobody with that kind of reach will do it because they fear losing the access to the reporters and the outlets. It’s a catch 22.
Protecting elections and getting out the vote won’t be enough on its own to save us from the authoritarian extremists pushing to control everyone and everything. But I would like to remind people like me with aspirations for a better world, that if you can’t get people to go to the polls and vote to retain the more sensible PA Supreme Court judges this fall, you’re unlikely to get them to put down their phones and get off their duffs for a revolution. You have to start somewhere, and don’t wait until October, and for pity’s sake, don’t wait for 2026 to start whatever you’re going to be doing.