Hello, Pennsylvania!

I’m happy to report that Pennsylvania’s 2026 primary went well. There were no major administrative errors like the ones we’ve seen in the last few years. Read our recap of the day’s events here.

There was, of course, that one thing. You probably saw that there was an explosion near a polling place in the Lehigh Valley. Read our story here if you missed it. The good news is that the incident didn’t appear to be targeting the polling place, no one was injured, and voting wasn’t disrupted.

Now, on to our main event. If you follow me on X or Bluesky you probably saw I promised to share a funny photo of myself if we hit 1,000 subscribers by May 15. Well, when I checked at 4:55 p.m. Friday, we were still three short. But when I came to work Monday we had surpassed 1,000, so I’ll just assume three of you signed up in those last five minutes.

Behold:

Needless to say I was stoked to find this and have been searching the last 25 years to find another. Maybe one day I can recreate the photo.

Do you have photos of weird fruit? Or tips on elections? Email them to me at [email protected].

“Because the results were so striking, we had to rerun and rerun the data.”

This week’s quote comes from Femida Handy, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She and her colleagues recently published a study that found voting was associated with a lower risk of mortality. Read about the study here.

It certainly caught my attention and I’ll be keeping an eye out for other studies like this.

The Republican suing to block Philadelphia’s requirement that write-in candidates for ward party committee positions receive at least 10 votes lost an appeal at the state’s Commonwealth Court, since the judge in the case said it was too early to sue. I am sure we are going to see more on this case once the board of commissioners certifies the election. 

What else should I look into? You can always reach me by email at [email protected], on X @ByCarterWalker, or on Bluesky @bycarterwalker.bsky.social. Follow me on Tik Tok and Instagram for video explainers of Pennsylvania voting and elections news.

And if you know someone who might be interested in our reporting on elections and voting throughout Pennsylvania, forward them this newsletter — they can sign up for it here.

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