Pennsylvania could keep its Democratic high court majority or get partisan deadlock on the bench

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania voters on Tuesday will decide whether to keep a Democratic majority on the state’s highest court — the center of pivotal fights over voting rights, redistricting and elections — or potentially plunge the court into a partisan deadlock in a premier presidential battleground.

The outcome will affect how the state Supreme Court could again be called on to settle partisan battles over election laws ahead of next year’s midterm contests.

Democratic Supreme Court justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht are running in a retention election, in which voters are asked to vote “yes” or “no” on whether to give them another term.

Reelecting any of them would continue the Democratic majority, which is currently 5-2. Defeating all three could plunge the bench into a partisan 2-2 stalemate for two years if Pennsylvania's politically divided government were to be unable to agree on temporary appointees to fill in. Supreme Court terms are 10 years, though age limits can shorten that time on the bench.

Traditionally, a retention campaign is an under-the-radar election.

But on Sunday night, President Donald Trump waded into the campaign, taking to social media to urge voters to “bring back the Rule of Law, and stand up for the Constitution” and reject “three Radical Democrat Supreme Court Justices.” He said they had, among other things, “unlawfully gerrymandered your Congressional maps, which led to my corrupt Impeachment (s).”

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro responded on social media, saying Trump has “zero credibility when it comes to the rule of law” after he “ tried to throw out Pennsylvanians’ votes and overturn the 2020 election ” and “pardoned the people who assaulted law enforcement” in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In an era of increasingly polarized judicial elections, Republicans mounted a late-emerging campaign to defeat the justices. Democrats marshaled a reelection campaign with their allies and received help from Shapiro.

The campaign was on track to cost more than $15 million, far more than previous retention elections, but nowhere near the $100 million spent earlier this year in Wisconsin — a record amount for a state Supreme Court race in which a Democratic-backed candidate defeated a challenger endorsed by Trump.

Still, the stakes in Pennsylvania’s election are very much the same.

Democrats have broadcast the justices’ support for abortion rights, voting rights and union rights, warning that losses could leave the court deadlocked and their precedents in jeopardy.

If the justices aren't retained, the Democratic governor and the Republican-controlled Senate could agree on temporary appointees to fill in until the 2027 election to pick successors. However, the last time there was a vacancy, when Justice Max Baer died in 2022, it went unfilled until after the 2023 election.

A deadlock means the court might be unable to settle cases involving voting and election laws through the 2026 midterm elections, when the governor’s office and a handful of contested congressional seats will be on the ballot. Lower court decisions could remain in place as a result.

The Republicans’ campaign targeted Democratic voters, telling them in flyers and TV ads to “defend Democracy” and that 10 years on the court is enough.

GOP ads also complained about the court's freeing of Bill Cosby in a 2021 decision that threw out his sexual assault conviction — “protect women and children,” flyers said — and its overturning of a Republican-drawn map of Pennsylvania’s congressional districts “so only Democrats could win.”

In recent years, the court has made major decisions around voting and elections, necessitated in part by the politically divided and often stalemated state government.

The justices in 2018 threw out the GOP congressional map, calling it unconstitutionally gerrymandered, and, four years later, again picked new district boundaries after a stalemate in government.

The court also turned away GOP challenges to Pennsylvania’s expansive vote-by-mail law, a focal point of Republican efforts to overturn Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

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Follow Marc Levy on X at https://x.com/timelywriter.