AP Decision Notes: What to expect for the Nov. 4 election in Pennsylvania

CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA (AP) — Control of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court hangs in the balance in statewide elections next week, when voters will cast ballots on judges for the state’s three highest courts. Voters across the commonwealth will also vote in municipal elections, including high-profile races in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

State Supreme Court Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht – all Democrats – will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot in a retention election, where voters will decide whether to award the sitting jurists new terms on the high court. Terms are 10 years, although Donohue must retire in 2027 when she reaches the mandated retirement age of 75. While retention elections are often a quiet affair in Pennsylvania, this year’s campaign has been heavily shaped by party politics.

Democrats hold a 5-2 majority on the state Supreme Court, but Republicans have mounted a campaign to oust Donohue, Dougherty and Wecht. If voters decide not to retain a justice for another term, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro could appoint a temporary replacement, subject to confirmation by the Republican-controlled state Senate. A deadlock in the confirmation process could result in a court tied at 2-2 if voters oust all three justices this year. An election to fill any vacant seats for full 10-year terms would be held in 2027.

The last state Supreme Court retention election was in 2017. The Republican justice on the ballot that year was retained with 68% of the vote, while the Democratic justice was retained with 71% of the vote.

Voters will also decide races for other state courts, including the state Superior Court and Commonwealth Court, the two statewide appellate courts a step below the state Supreme Court.

In the race for Pittsburgh mayor, Democratic Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor and Republican Tony Moreno are running to replace outgoing Democratic incumbent Ed Gainey. O’Connor, a former member of the Pittsburgh City Council and son of the late Mayor Bob O’Connor, defeated Gainey in the May primary. Moreno, a former police officer, was the 2021 Republican mayoral nominee who lost to Gainey in the general election.

In Philadelphia, Democrat Larry Krasner seeks a third term as district attorney against former Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Pat Dugan. Dugan stepped down midway through his third term in 2024 to mount a challenge against Krasner for the Democratic nomination. Krasner defeated Dugan in the May primary, but Dugan switched parties in August to run in the general election as a Republican.

Democrats have won recent general elections in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia by wide margins. Gainey defeated Moreno in the 2021 Pittsburgh mayoral race with about 71% of the vote. In Philadelphia, Krasner won reelection to a second term in 2021 with about 72% of the vote.

The Associated Press does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

Pennsylvania requires an automatic recount for statewide races with a vote margin of 0.5 percentage points or less. For non-statewide races, voters may petition an individual county board of elections or the courts to order a recount. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Here’s a look at what to expect on Nov. 4:

Polls close at 8 p.m. ET.

The AP will provide vote results and declare winners in the retention elections for Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Superior Court and Commonwealth Court, and the general elections for Superior Court, Commonwealth Court, Pittsburgh mayor, Philadelphia district attorney and Philadelphia controller.

Any voter registered in Pennsylvania may participate in the statewide general elections. Voters registered in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh may participate in the general elections in their city.

As of Oct. 6, there were about 3.8 million Democrats and 3.6 million Republicans registered in Pennsylvania. In Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, Democrats comprised nearly 55% of the county’s 912,000 registered voters, while Republicans comprised about 29%. Democrats made up about 72% of Philadelphia’s roughly 1.1 million registered voters. Republicans made up about 12%.

Nearly 71,000 people voted in the 2021 general election for Pittsburgh mayor, which was about 31% of registered voters at the time. Mail ballots made up about 35% of votes cast. Roughly 230,000 people voted in the Philadelphia municipal general election that year, or about 22% of registered voters. About 32% of the vote was from mail ballots.

About 3.1 million votes were cast in the 2023 state Supreme Court general election, or roughly 36% of registered voters at the time. Mail votes comprised about 26% of the total votes cast.

As of Monday, more than 571,000 of the 1.1 million absentee ballots requested statewide had already been cast. About 67% of these votes came from Democrats and about 25% were from Republicans. See the AP Early Vote Tracker for the latest update.

In Pittsburgh, more than 15,000 pre-Election Day votes had been cast as of Oct. 10. About 87% of these votes came from Democrats and about 8% from Republicans.

In the 2024 presidential election, the AP first reported results from Pennsylvania at 8 p.m. ET in Allegheny County just as polls closed. The first results in Philadelphia were reported at 8:08 p.m. ET. By noon ET the next day, nearly 97% of the total statewide vote had been tabulated.

Vote tabulation ended for the night in Allegheny County at 12:08 a.m. ET with about 97% of the vote counted and in Philadelphia at 1:56 a.m. ET with about 93% of the vote counted.

As of Nov. 4, there will be 364 days until the 2026 midterm elections and 1,099 days until the 2028 general election.

Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2025 election at https://apnews.com/projects/election-results-2025/.

FILE - Pittsburgh mayoral candidate Corey O'Connor speaks at a candidate's forum held at Perry Traditional Academy in Pittsburgh on April, 24,. 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

FILE - Pittsburgh mayoral candidate Tony Moreno speaks at a candidate's forum held at Perry Traditional Academy in Pittsburgh on April, 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

A sign is posted in opposition to retaining Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices in the November election, in Berwyn, Pa., Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

A sign is posted in support of retaining Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices in the November election, in Berwyn, Pa., Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

BANGKOK (AP) — Iranian demonstrators' ability to get details of bloody nationwide protests out to the world has been given a strong boost, with SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service dropping its fees to allow more people to circumvent the Tehran government's strongest attempt ever to prevent information from spilling outside its borders, activists said Wednesday.

The move by the American aerospace company run by Elon Musk follows the complete shutdown of telecommunications and internet access to Iran's 85 million people on Jan. 8, as protests expanded over the Islamic Republic's faltering economy and the collapse of its currency.

SpaceX has not officially announced the decision and did not respond to a request for comment, but activists told The Associated Press that Starlink has been available for free to anyone in Iran with the receivers since Tuesday and that the company has gone even further by pushing a firmware update to help circumvent government efforts to jam the satellite signals.

The moves by Starlink came two days after President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he was going to reach out to Musk to ask for Starlink help for protesters, a call later confirmed by his press secretary, though it's not clear if that is what prompted Musk to act.

“Starlink has been crucial,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian whose nonprofit Net Freedom Pioneers has helped smuggle units into Iran, pointing to video that emerged Sunday showing rows of bodies at a forensic medical center near Tehran.

“That showed a few hundred bodies on the ground, that came out because of Starlink," he said in an interview from Los Angeles. "I think that those videos from the center pretty much changed everyone's understanding of what's happening because they saw it with their own eyes.”

Since the outbreak of demonstrations Dec. 28, the death toll has risen to more than 2,500 people, primarily protesters but also security personnel, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Starlink is banned in Iran by telecommunication regulations, as the country never authorized the importation, sale or use of the devices. Activists fear they could be accused of helping the U.S. or Israel by using Starlink and charged with espionage, which can carry the death penalty.

The first units were smuggled into Iran in 2022 during protests over the country's mandatory headscarf law, after Musk got the Biden administration to exempt the Starlink service from Iran sanctions.

Since then, more than 50,000 units are estimated to have been sneaked in, with people going to great lengths to conceal them, using virtual private networks while on the system to hide IP addresses and taking other precautions, said Ahmad Ahmadian, the executive director of Holistic Resilience, a Los Angeles-based organization that was responsible for getting some of the first Starlink units into Iran.

Starlink is a global internet network that relies on some 10,000 satellites orbiting Earth. Subscribers need to have equipment, including an antenna that requires a line of sight to the satellite, so must be deployed in the open, where it could be spotted by authorities. Many Iranians disguise them as solar panels, Ahmadian said.

After efforts to shut down communications during the 12-day war with Israel in June proved to be not terribly effective, Iranian security services have taken more “extreme tactics” now to jam Starlink's radio signals and GPS systems, Ahmadian said in a phone interview. After Holistic Resilience passed on reports to SpaceX, Ahmadian said, the company pushed its firmware update to avoid jamming.

Security services also rely on informers to tell them who might be using Starlink, and search internet and social media traffic for signs it has been used. There have been reports they have raided apartments with satellite dishes.

“There has always been a cat-and-mouse game,” said Ahmadian, who fled Iran in 2012 after serving time in prison for student activism. “The government is using every tool in its toolbox.”

Still, Ahmadian noted that the government jamming attempts had only been effective in certain urban areas, suggesting that security services lack the resources to block Starlink more broadly.

Iran did begin to allow people to call out internationally on Tuesday via mobile phones, but calls from outside the country into Iran remain blocked.

Compared to protests in 2019, when lesser measures by the government were able to effectively stifle information reaching the rest of the world for more than a week, Ahmadian said the proliferation of Starlink has made it impossible to prevent communications. He said the flow could increase now that the service has been made free.

“This time around they really shut it down, even fixed landlines were not working,” he said. “But despite this, the information was coming out, and it also shows how distributed this community of Starlink users is in the country.”

Musk has made Starlink free for use during several natural disasters, and Ukraine has relied heavily on the service since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. It was initially funded by SpaceX and later through an American government contract.

Musk's involvement had raised concerns over the power of such a system being in the hands of one person, after he refused to extend Ukraine's Starlink coverage to support a planned Ukrainian counterattack in Russian-occupied Crimea.

As a proponent of Starlink for Iran, Ahmadian said the Crimea decision was a wake-up call for him, but that he couldn't see any reason why Musk might be inclined to act similarly in Iran.

“Looking at the political Elon, I think he would have more interest ... in a free Iran as a new market,” he said.

Starlink's effort in circumventing Tehran's efforts to shut down communications is being watched closely around the world. The satellite service has expanded rapidly in recent years, securing licenses in more than 120 countries, including some with authoritarian rulers who have persecuted journalists and protesters.

Julia Voo, who heads the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Cyber Power and Future Conflict Program in Singapore, said there is a risk of activists becoming reliant on one company as a lifeline, as it “creates a single point of failure,” though currently there are no comparable alternatives.

China has been exploring ways to hunt and destroy Starlink satellites, and Voo said the more effective Starlink proves itself at penetrating “government-mandated terrestrial blackouts, the more states will be observing.”

“It's just going to result in more efforts to broaden controls over various ways of communication, for those in Iran and everywhere else watching,” she said.

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Bernard Condon in New York contributed to this report.

FILE - In this photo obtained by The Associated Press, Iranians attend an anti-government protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP, file)

FILE - A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket stands ready for launch at pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, June 26, 2020. (AP Photo/John Raoux, file)