OPINION: Pennsylvania Voters Must Not Sleep on This 'Off-Year' Election

It’s October, the time of year for autumn colors, football, Halloween, and November elections. This year, we vote for local and county level officials and judges. We also will choose whether to retain justices/judges at the county level and above for another 10-year term. These “off-year” elections are typically sleepy affairs; however, this year is different.

Many voters received post cards or have seen ads from PACs like Commonwealth Partners, backed by Pennsylvania’s richest man, billionaire Jeff Yass. Jeff Yass is trying to trick voters with a barrage of misleading and false information about the retention of our Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices. He says we should “term limit” the Supreme Court. We already do this. In Pennsylvania, we elect Supreme Court Justices and other judges to 10-year terms. After each term is complete, we vote “yes” to retain the judge for another decade on the bench or “no” to end their term.

Watchdog reporter, Katie Bernard, describes these mailers in her Sept. 28 Philadelphia Inquirer article “A ‘brazen’ Jeffrey Yass-backed mailer suggests the Pa. Supreme Court created the congressional map it actually threw out.” One of Yass’s mailers claims the Court gerrymandered the congressional districts to help Democrats win and includes an image of a “map with wildly shaped districts circled in red.” Despite what Jeff Yass says, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices prevented partisan gerrymandering of Pennsylvania’s congressional map. The truth is, our Supreme Court threw out as unconstitutional the gerrymandered map put forth by Republican legislators and replaced it with a map of representative districts.

Do not let these ultraconservative billionaires use their riches to trick YOU. Our elected justices voted to protect everyone’s rights, adopting districts where the voters choose their representatives, rather than letting representatives choose their voters.




https://buckscountybeacon.com/2025/10/opinion-pennsylvania-voters-must-not-sleep-on-this-off-year-election/