May 18, 2021 3 min read

Pennsylvania voters were given the opportunity to limit a governor’s emergency authority on Tuesday, more than a year after Gov. Tom Wolf’s pandemic restrictions drew fierce backlash among legislative Republicans, in an otherwise quiet off-year primary election that also included balloting for an open seat on the state’s highest court.

Voters of all kinds, including independents, were allowed to vote on four ballot questions, including two that stemmed from Republican lawmakers’ dissatisfaction with how Wolf, a Democrat, wielded his authority during the COVID-19 crisis.

Republican lawmakers across the country are reeling in emergency powers that governors wielded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Pennsylvania is in the unique position of being the first to take the question to voters. Two questions seek to limit a governor’s emergency disaster declarations and put more power in the hands of lawmakers. They ask voters to end a declaration after 21 days and to give lawmakers the sole authority to extend it or end it at any time with a simple majority vote.

Current law allows a governor to issue an emergency declaration for up to 90 days and extend it without limit. The constitution requires a two-thirds majority vote by lawmakers to end the declaration.

Wolf and his emergency disaster director have called the proposals reckless, political and a threat to a functioning society if it prevents a fast and wide-ranging response to increasingly complicated disasters.

Republicans have accused Wolf of fear-mongering and said that the framers of the constitution never intended for a governor to hold so much power to suspend regulations, order mask-wearing and businesses and schools shut down.

The Legislature did not hold hearings on the measures, and they may end up in court if voters approve them because their effect is in dispute.

Republicans claim the governor cannot order shutdowns without a disaster emergency in effect. Wolf disagrees, saying a governor’s authority during a public health emergency rests on separate public health law and is unaffected by the ballot questions.

A third, unrelated question asks voters to decide whether to add a passage to the constitution outlawing discrimination because of someone’s race or ethnicity. It’s believed to be the first time since last summer’s protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that voters will decide a racial equity issue on a statewide ballot. Constitutional law professors say it will have little practical effect because courts already consider such discrimination to violate both the state and federal constitutions.

In Washington County, the constitutional amendment that would give the Legislature the power to terminate an emergency declaration was ahead by 58% to 41%, with 23,379 votes in favor as of 10:30 p.m. and 16,334 votes against. The second constitutional amendment, on disaster emergency declaration and management, was also ahead in the county with 59% of the vote, with 23,589 votes in favor and 15,930 votes against, or 40.3%.

The constitutional amendment that would prohibit discrimination based on race or ethnicity was ahead in Washington County by a 2-to-1 margin, with 26,376 votes, or 66.6% in favor, and 33.4% against. A statewide referendum that would allow municipal fire and emergency service companies to draw from the same loan fund currently being used by volunteer companies was winning in landslide numbers in the county, with 28,483 votes, or 71.9% in favor, and 11,111 votes, or 28.1%, against.