News & Brews November 1, 2024
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Who will win Pa.? No one knows
Let’s just say the presidential race in Pa. is very, very close. Susquehanna Polling & Research CEO Jim Lee wrote that the national climate and polling both suggest Trump will win. The NY Times regales us with 19 maps (19!) showing how either candidate could win. And the RealClear Polling average shows that every battleground state is pretty much a statistical tie. With four days to go, both presidential campaigns are hitting swing states. President Biden, Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff, and MN First Lady Gwen Walz are all slated to be in Pa. today campaigning for Harris.
Mail-in ballot case heads to Pa. Supreme Court
Well, anyone could have predicted this was coming. After a Commonwealth Court panel ruled this week that undated or incorrectly dated mail-in ballots must be counted, the case is heading to the Pa. Supreme Court. Here’s the thing: While the court ruling technically applied only to some ballots in recent Philly special elections, the ruling ran counter to a recent Pa. Supreme Court ruling, which said such ballots should not be counted. Cue the chaos. Now the Pa. Supreme Court is being asked to issue an emergency stay of the lower court’s ruling and to order counties to be “bound to enforce the mandatory date requirement for absentee and mail-in ballots.”
Erie County challenged over mail-in ballot mistakes
The Center Square reports that Erie County elections officials are facing “a legal challenge after discovering mail-in ballot errors that may have impacted as many as 20,000 Pennsylvania voters.” It seems many voters never received their mail-in ballots, while other received “duplicates with incorrect information.” The story notes that “the county has extended election office hours through the weekend to accommodate residents who need to request new ballots, even though the statutory deadline passed Tuesday.”
Pa. ranks 34th in state tax competitiveness
According to the 2025 State Tax Competitiveness Index released by the non-partisan Tax Foundation, Pennsylvania ranks 34th overall. The index factors in corporate taxes, individual income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and unemployment insurance taxes. Our ranking is unchanged from last year. The Tax Foundation notes that “Pennsylvania’s local taxes are among the more complex and burdensome in the country.”
Penn State Trustees committee meets in public for 1st time since 2011
Spotlight PA reports that the Penn State Board of Trustees executive committee met by video publicly yesterday for the first time in nearly 13 years. At the meeting, the committee “outline[d] the agendas for the board’s meetings next week in State College — work it previously did in private. The university has argued those closed-door gatherings were allowable under the state’s open meetings statute, but some media law experts have questioned the practice.”