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It’s 2025. It’s an off-year. Nothing really happening this November, right? Wrong. In addition to big statewide races in New Jersey, Virginia, and a potentially major shakeup in our biggest city, we are locked in a battle for control of a swing-state Supreme Court that could spell the end of our democracy if we lose it, and it’s flying under the radar in a BIG way.
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On November 4th, the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania will vote on whether or not to keep three Democratic state supreme court members, Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht, who make up the majority of the Democrats’ 5-2 dominance of the court.
PA does things a little differently; they have what’s called a “retention” election, which means you vote “yes” to keep the judges or “no” to have Gov. Josh Shapiro replace them with interim candidates that must be confirmed by the state Senate — currently controlled by Republicans 27-23 — before a full-on partisan election to replace them in 2027.
Pennsylvania is one of the most important swing states in the country, potentially the deciding factor in the next presidential election. Trump won the state by around 2% of the vote in 2024; Biden won it by around 2% in 2020, and Trump won it by a little more than 1% in 2016.
The razor-thin margins of victory make it a prime candidate for Trump’s election-stealing shenanigans, and if we lose control of the state Supreme Court, Trump and his cronies will have the opportunity to unleash a dark money avalanche and install loyalist justices who will happily rubber-stamp lawsuits to throw out votes, nullify election results, or award delegates regardless of vote count.
Click here to chip in to the State and Local Election Alliance and support their efforts to retain PA’s Supreme Court judges! [ [link removed] ]
This means a Democratic candidate will probably never win PA again, our road to the White House will end permanently in Harrisburg, and Donald Trump’s Turd Reich will usher in a thousand years of darkness.
Perhaps that’s a *tad* hyperbolic, but we cannot stress enough how high the stakes are for this election, and Republicans know it too. It’s not just the presidential elections at risk; these justices delivered three huge wins for democracy by voting to knock down the state’s congressional map as an unconstitutional gerrymander, ruling that ballot dropboxes were permitted, and upholding the state’s mail-in voting laws.
That’s why Pennsylvania’s richest man, Jeff Yass, and Republicans have poured over $8 million into this race. It’s already the most expensive retention election in Pennsylvania history.
We cannot afford to lose these judges. Please do everything you can to get the word out. You can donate [ [link removed] ]to activist groups, call your friends or anyone you know in Pennsylvania, take a road trip to knock on doors, or click here to virtually phonebank [ [link removed] ]. There’s too much at risk to let this race get lost in the cacophony of Trumpian outrage and distraction.
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