Pennsylvania
67 counties, 2,559 municipalities tiling every acre, 4,851 governments — and a November ballot kept thin by constitutional design.
What is actually on my November ballot?
State deltas
Every state has hair. Here is Pennsylvania's.
The rules that make this state different from the last one, what each breaks if you assume the national default, and how the engine resolves it.
The constitution assigns every county, city, borough, township, school, and judicial office to the municipal election in odd Novembers. A midterm model expecting local contests finds a ballot with three layers missing — they all ran in 2025 and run again in 2027.
The odd-year cycle is a first-class calendar. Local seats show holders and 2027 filing windows, never vacancies.
School directors, common pleas judges, and magisterial district judges may cross-file in both major-party primaries. A candidate who wins both is both parties' nominee in November — one person, two nominations, and a general election decided in May.
Nominations are events attached to one candidacy record. A double primary win renders as a single candidate holding two lines, not two contests.
County commissioners are elected three at a time while each voter marks no more than two — the constitution's minority-party guarantee. The same limited voting elects county auditors, and Philadelphia's at-large council seats run seven-elect-five. Plurality math misreads all of it.
Limited-voting contests carry their vote-for and elect counts explicitly; the third seat is expected, not an anomaly.
Pennsylvania elects a prothonotary — the civil clerk, under a name that exists almost nowhere else — beside the clerk of courts, register of wills, and clerk of orphans' court. County class dictates which combine: by 8th class, one person holds all five judicial-records offices.
Offices carry statutory identities with class-driven combination rules. The same person holding five offices is five seats, one holder.
Counties are classed 1st through 8th (plus 2A) by population — the class decides controller versus auditors and the row-office lattice. Seven home-rule counties plus consolidated Philadelphia deviate entirely. And the First Class Township Code was just repealed and recodified this April as Title 73.
The office slate is generated from class plus charter, with statute cites that carry valid-from dates — Act 7 of 2026 included.
Only registered Democrats and Republicans vote in their party's primary; independents see ballot questions and specials only. Registration — including party switches — closes 15 days out. Unlike six of the nine states before this one, affiliation here is a real, binding field.
Party is a registered attribute with switch dates. Primary universes are computed from enrollment, not inferred from behavior.
The Third Circuit's August 2025 ruling bars counties from rejecting mail ballots over missing envelope dates — but appeals continue into this cycle, and the rule could flip before November. Meanwhile pre-canvassing before 7 a.m. on election day remains illegal, so close races count slowly.
Mail-ballot totals carry a litigation flag and a rejection-rule version. Slow counts are modeled as expected cadence, not failure.
No unincorporated land exists: 2,559 municipalities tile the state without gaps or overlaps, so every address maps to exactly one municipality, county, and school district. But the tile decides the form — 92 first-class townships elect commissioners to four-year terms; 1,454 second-class townships elect supervisors to six.
Address resolution is a single containment lookup — and the tile's class, not its name, generates the office slate and term lengths.
Federal to township
What Pennsylvania actually elects.
The seats run bottom-heavy here too — but this November, everything below the state layer is dark by design. The engine holds 4,851 governments warm for 2027.
Congressional map
Where those seats are.
The 17 congressional districts in force for the 2026 cycle — not necessarily the map this delegation was elected under. Pennsylvania has not redrawn since the 119th Congress was seated.
| District | Population | Median income |
|---|---|---|
| PA-01 | 763,720 | $108,039 |
| PA-02 | 713,964 | $56,629 |
| PA-03 | 768,800 | $63,678 |
| PA-04 | 781,948 | $103,971 |
| PA-05 | 757,986 | $81,754 |
| PA-06 | 777,885 | $102,246 |
| PA-07 | 778,593 | $79,206 |
| PA-08 | 764,570 | $61,140 |
| PA-09 | 765,968 | $67,325 |
| PA-10 | 781,862 | $78,636 |
| PA-11 | 773,134 | $80,905 |
| PA-12 | 752,466 | $70,562 |
| PA-13 | 765,875 | $64,789 |
| PA-14 | 753,602 | $63,720 |
| PA-15 | 750,180 | $62,295 |
| PA-16 | 761,148 | $65,043 |
| PA-17 | 749,982 | $83,227 |
County ledger
Sixty-seven boards, one slow statute.
County boards feed the state's unofficial portal on election night — but nothing opens before 7 a.m., so the ledger fills late. Thirteen of 67 shown.
| County | Feed vehicle | Precincts | Contests | Status | Last read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Philadelphia · city comm'rs | JSON feed | 1,703 | 14 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Allegheny | JSON feed | 1,323 | 15 | Verified | 4 hr |
| Montgomery | Vendor app | 425 | 12 | Verified | 6 hr |
| Delaware | County HTML | 428 | 11 | Verified | 7 hr |
| Bucks | Vendor app | 304 | 11 | Verified | 6 hr |
| Lancaster | Vendor app | 240 | 10 | Verified | 6 hr |
| Chester | PDF / SOVC | 230 | 10 | Verified | 9 hr |
| Berks | PDF / SOVC | 202 | 9 | Sweeping | 10 hr |
| Luzerne | County HTML | 186 | 9 | Verified | 7 hr |
| York | County HTML | 159 | 10 | Verified | 7 hr |
| Erie | PDF / SOVC | 149 | 9 | Verified | 9 hr |
| Forest | Scan only | 9 | 4 | Journal entry | 13 hr |
| Cameron | Scan only | 7 | 4 | Journal entry | 13 hr |