Today Pennsylvania voters will cast ballots in primary elections for president, Congress, state attorney general and the state Legislature.
Polls open at 7 a.m., and results from Pennsylvania’s 67 counties will be available on the Department of State’s webpage at dos.pa.gov after the polls close at 8 p.m.
Registered Democratic and Republican voters will be able to choose the candidates who will go on to run in the November general election, as well as delegates for the parties’ conventions this summer.
Polls are showing Democratic front-runner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Republican front-runner and New York businessman Donald Trump ahead of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Aside from the statewide vote for presidential candidates, party voters will be picking delegates to elect them at the convention. Democratic primary voters will select 127 delegates, allocated among congressional districts. Those delegates are identified on the ballot as to whether they support Ms. Clinton or Mr. Sanders. Republicans will pick 71 delegates, but only 17 are bound to support the primary winner. The other 54 are not identified on the ballot as to which candidate they support.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Joseph Vodvarka will be on the ballot in Allegheny County, but reporting of vote totals will be delayed as some counties will have to manually tally his votes. On April 19, the state Supreme Court ordered that Mr. Vodvarka’s name be restored to the ballot, overturning a previous Commonwealth Court ruling from March 31. Many counties were not able to restore his name on the ballot in time for today’s vote.
Allegheny County voters also will see a ballot question to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution regarding the mandatory retirement age for all Pennsylvania judges. However, any votes cast on that question will not be counted/certified pursuant to House Resolution 783. Last week, Commonwealth Court denied a preliminary injunction that sought to prevent the secretary of state from carrying out the directive of House Resolution 783 to remove the ballot question. Because of the proximity to Election Day, most counties were unable to remove the question from printed ballots or programmed voting systems.
A second constitutional amendment ballot question, asking voters whether Philadelphia Traffic Court should be abolished, was not affected by the court order and remains on the ballot. All votes cast for the second question will be tallied.
Information on the primary is available on Early Returns, the Post-Gazette’s political blog.
The Associated Press contributed.
First Published: April 26, 2016, 4:04 a.m.
