Hello Pennsylvania!

If you didn’t hear, we had an election earlier this week! It went smoothly in Pennsylvania, for the most part. More on that in a bit.

But first, since this was a municipal election where the focus is really at the local level, we took the opportunity to zoom in on the smallest election unit: the precinct.

If you’re reading this newsletter, you probably know what a poll worker is and how vital they are to making elections happen. We decided to get to know one poll worker, a first time judge of elections in Chester County, and talk to him about why he got involved and what he’s learned. 

The judge, Jay Schneider, told us that seeing the operation from the inside dispelled the suspicions he harbored after the 2020 election. Read that first story here.

And we followed up with Jay on Election Day to see what his experience as a first time judge was like. He said it was hectic, but he’ll “definitely” be back next year. Read that story here.

Election Day was pretty smooth, despite some high stake judicial races. The state almost went incident free, except for one northeast Pennsylvania county.

No, it wasn’t Luzerne this time, but its neighbor, Northampton had an issue with one of its statewide judicial retention races. An ES&S worker apparently made an error when configuring the county’s voting equipment, and the county did not do enough logic and accuracy testing ahead of the election to catch it. Read more about that here.

There was also a bomb threat at Radnor High School in Delaware County which forced two polling locations to relocate and stay open late. It is unclear to me at this point if the bomb threat was directed at the precincts themselves, or the high school.

The 2024 presidential election is 361 days away. What explainers do you need me to write before then? Let me know on Twitter @ByCarterWalker or via email at cwalker@votebeat.org.