Thousands of new voter applications flooded election offices around the state yesterday, with the number of Democratic voters already at an all-time record as Pennsylvania’s registration deadline expired at midnight.

Final numbers won’t be known until the end of the month, after county election officials have processed all the applications.

But registered Democrats in Pennsylvania already outnumber Republicans by an unprecedented 1.17 million voters – considered bad news for presidential candidate John McCain and everyone below him on the Republican ticket.  read more »

The deteriorating economy and rising costs for such big-ticket items as health care and prisons is leading the state government on a path to a massive deficit that will require a tax increase to erase, two senior state senators said yesterday.

Democrat Vincent J. Fumo of Philadelphia and Republican Gibson E. Armstrong of Lancaster County said the deficit they were projecting would be larger than any other one in the last three decades.

They also said that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make up the difference by just cutting costs, either because legislators were unwilling to take money out of programs and services or because state government was already squeezed.  read more »

BELLEFONTE, CENTRE COUNTY – Last month a Pennsylvania judge denied a request by the Cumberland County Republican Chairman to remove Libertarian Presidential Candidate Bob Barr’s name from the ballot.

That chairman is taking an appeal to a higher court in this state, and in doing he is making Pennsylvania counties wait before certifying their November ballot.

Centre County Elections Director Joyce McKinley said she will not print the more than 100,000 ballots the county will use until the Barr situation is figured out.

In addition, this is the first election Centre County will be using paper ballots after a switch earlier this year from a touch screen system.

She worries that time is running out, and this is one more hurdle for her busy election’s office.  read more »

Four weeks before Election Day, figuring out whether House Democrats or Republicans will emerge victorious in this year’s state legislative races is harder than deciphering the ending of ‘‘The Sopranos.’‘

At first blush, this is a political season that should be blowing the Democrats’ way. Voters are sour on the economy, the party has registered hundreds of thousands of new voters, and in Barack Obama there’s a candidate atop the ticket who has energized the party faithful.

But there’s a major buzz-kill: the public-cash-for-political-gain scandal known as Bonusgate that so far has resulted in the arrests of a dozen current and former House Democrats on a litany of corruption and theft charges.  read more »

Pennsylvania, as with most states, can be analyzed politically by looking at a few key counties and how they break in a political campaign.

Historically, the four collar counties of Philadelphia broke heavily Republican and neutralized the advantage Democrats had coming out of Philadelphia. Over the past decade this trend has reversed itself —- and with it the political balance in the state.  read more »

The partnership that offered $12.8 billion to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike for 75 years said Tuesday it was walking away from the deal, citing inaction by the state Legislature.

Pennsylvania Transportation Partners decided not to renew an offer that expired at the end of the business day, but a spokesman said the group was open to pursuing a similar deal in the future.

‘‘Since our team, I believe, has significant experience on the road and has spent a great deal of time with the people of Pennsylvania, we’re looking [for] any opportunities that might arise from this, should enabling legislation be enacted,’‘ said Jim Courtovich.  read more »

The federal corruption trial of state Sen. Vince Fumo and a former aide, which is scheduled to resume on Oct. 20, took yet another turn yesterday.

The case was reassigned by U.S. District Chief Judge Harvey Bartle III to U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter.

No reason was given in the one-paragraph order from Bartle, except to say that the judge who had been presiding over the case since 2006, U.S. District Judge William H. Yohn Jr., had “recused” himself.

On the eve of a funeral for a Philadelphia policeman slain by a paroled felon, Gov. Ed Rendell on Monday temporarily halted the early release of state prison inmates and named a Temple University professor to lead a review of parole procedures.

The governor named John Goldkamp, chairman of the university’s Criminal Justice Department and a nationally recognized expert on incarceration, to head the review of how the state Corrections Department and the Board of Probation and Parole handled the latest Philadelphia police slaying and another that occurred four months earlier.  read more »