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The field is set for this year's big race for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court [1]
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Date: 2023-03-09
The post everyone wants to win on Nov. 7 became vacant last September when Chief Justice Max Baer died at the age of 74, just months before the Democrat was to retire because of mandatory age limits: Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has not yet nominated a successor, and it's unclear if the GOP-led state Senate would confirm anyone he picked. The body retains a 4-2 Democratic majority, but Baer’s party badly felt his absence last year in an important pre-election case.
That autumn one Democratic justice, Kevin Dougherty, sided with his two Republican colleagues against the remaining three Democratic members in a high-profile case over whether to count mail-in ballots that arrived on time but had missing or incorrect dates. This deadlock meant that election authorities were required to "segregate and preserve any ballots contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes," a decision that Democrats feared could cost them crucial contests.
The party, after scrambling to encourage any impacted voters to cast new votes (one woman even immediately flew home from Colorado at her own expense to make sure she would "not be silenced by voter suppression"), got something of a reprieve when Senate nominee John Fetterman and other Democrats pulled off decisive wins. Still, the ruling was a troubling reminder that, even with a 4-2 Democratic edge on the state's highest court, Republicans could still have their way on major cases. However, while a win this fall would be a boon to Republicans, the soonest they could actually retake the majority (barring more unexpected vacancies) would be 2025.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/9/2157167/-The-field-is-set-for-this-year-s-big-race-for-the-Pennsylvania-Supreme-Court
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