Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has defeated Democratic primary challenger Carlos Vega, the Associated Press projects, taking a giant step toward winning a second term after campaigning on his record of criminal justice reform.

Krasner, 60, was a defense and civil rights lawyer for three decades, with a long record of suing the Philadelphia police before he was elected as a reformer in 2017. That victory helped propel him to the forefront of a new crop of progressive prosecutors across the country, a reform movement that was tested this election by rising violent crime.

Vega, 64, was a prosecutor for 35 years until Krasner fired him during his first week as DA in 2018. Vega still has a federal age discrimination suit pending against Krasner and last week also sued Krasner’s campaign for slander.

In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one, the Democratic nominee is likely to win November’s general election. He won the 2017 general election with 75% of the vote.

Defense attorney Chuck Peruto, the only Republican in the race, significantly trails the Democrats in fund-raising and has drawn scrutiny for controversial statements in candidate forums and on his campaign website.

» READ MORE: Philly DA Larry Krasner beats primary challenger Carlos Vega by wide margin in closely watched race

Read more of our primary election coverage:

— Chris Brennan and Sean Collins Walsh

Carlos Vega conceded the Democratic primary race for Philadelphia district attorney Tuesday night.

”It looks like tonight we did not get the result we wanted, but even in defeat we have grace & we smile,” Vega said in a tweet.

Incumbent District Attorney Krasner held a sizable lead over Vega and declared victory just before 11 p.m. The Associated Press still had not called the race just before midnight.

— Laura McCrystal

Pennsylvania voters have approved an amendment to the state constitution to outlaw discrimination based on race and ethnicity, according to the Associated Press.

As of 11:30 p.m., unofficial state results showed more than 72% of voters backing the proposal. The amendment was championed by state Sen. Vincent Hughes (D., Philadelphia) in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and supported by the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

The AP has yet to make a call on two other proposed constitutional amendments that would curtail Gov. Tom Wolf’s emergency powers.

— Sarah Anne Hughes

Pittsburgh’s incumbent mayor conceded the primary election Tuesday to challenger Ed Gainey, who would become the city’s first Black chief executive if he wins the general election in November.

Bill Peduto, a Democrat, had been seeking a third term against three primary challengers but instead called to congratulate Gainey, a five-term state representative. “Wishing him well,” Peduto tweeted late Tuesday.

Gainey was all but assured a victory in November in the heavily Democratic city. He had consistently made the campaign about equality for Black and poor residents, and accused Peduto of failing to ensure equity in policing, housing and other areas. At one point, he called Pittsburgh “a tale of two cities.”

» READ MORE: Pittsburgh on its way to electing first Black mayor as incumbent Bill Peduto concedes

— Associated Press

District attorney candidate Carlos Vega and about three dozen supporters gathered at a catering hall in the Fox Chase section of Northeast Philadelphia as results came in Tuesday night.

The mood was neither excited nor gloomy as supporters chowed on buffet food and ordered drinks from a cash bar at the Knowlton Mansion.

The campaign asked an Inquirer reporter to leave its results watch party, which the campaign had attempted to prevent media from covering despite a longtime tradition of journalists observing candidates’ election night events.

Prior to Election Day, the campaign had declined all media requests for access to the event. The Inquirer learned of the location and attended for about an hour and a half before being asked to leave by Vega campaign volunteer Albert Eisenberg.

Vega declined a parting interview, saying Eisenberg advised him not to speak to a reporter.

— Sean Collins Walsh

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner declared victory just before 11 p.m. Tuesday, as he appeared poised to defeat Democratic primary challenger Carlos Vega.

Krasner held a sizeable lead over Vega by a margin of almost two votes to one, with more results still to be counted. The race had not yet been called by the Associated Press.

”Four years ago we promised reform and a focus on serious crime,” Krasner said. “We kept those promises. And this time they put us back in office for what we have done. Not ideas, not promises, but realities.”

Krasner claimed a mandate, saying it came “from the people most affected by serious crime” who embraced his run as a reformer.

“That mandate has rejected, definitively, a politics of fear that is built on falsehoods,” he said, calling for more funding for crime prevention. “We have to invest in all those things because we were robbed of them a long time ago. And what we are facing now is the consequences.”

Krasner, who entered to the cheers of supporters at 10:45 p.m. as Clampdown by The Clash played, shrugged off his Republican challenger in November’s general election, defense attorney Chuck Peruto. “Let’s just say, I think we all know the second term of four and a half years starts now,” he said.

Krasner’s victory party at a Center City hotel attracted several of his elected supporters, including Sheriff Rochelle Bilal and City Council members Jamie Gauthier, Kendra Brooks, and Helen Gym.

Bilal told the crowd, “Nobody is perfect. But decades of injustice needs to change.”

”I love Larry so much because he comes down to the hood every time,” Brooks said. “This is the change we wanted to see and the change we’re going to fight for.”

Gauthier declared, “This is what Philly looks like when it doubles down,” saying Philadelphia voters want reform in criminal justice. She said a victory one-on-one race with Democratic challenger Carlos Vega, a 35-year prosecutor before Krasner fired him in 2018, proves that.

Shaun King, a criminal justice reform activist and co-founder of Real Justice PAC, moved from table to table as the crowd watched results roll in, talking with Krasner supporters about law enforcement and prosecution.

Democratic challenger Carlos Vega sued King, Real Justice PAC and Krasner’s campaign last week, claiming they slandered him with comments about his record as a prosecutor.

— Chris Brennan

Polls are now closed in Pennsylvania. Voters who were in line by 8 p.m. can still cast their ballots.

— Laura McCrystal

The bulk of Philadelphia’s mail ballot results will be posted later than expected, elections officials said Tuesday evening.

Instead of being able to release the results of about 40,000 mail ballots — the majority of those votes — shortly after 8 p.m., elections officials expect to post the tallies from only about 10,000, said Nick Custodio, deputy commissioner under Lisa Deeley, the city’s elections chief. Another 20,000 to 25,000 ballots should still be counted and their results published by the end of the night, sometime around midnight.

Other ballots were either rejected, such as for not having signatures or secrecy envelopes, or were damaged by the machines and will need to be hand-counted later.

That means most of the 40,000 ballots should still ultimately be counted by the end of the night, but the delay in when the results are posted could mean a longer wait to know who won the district attorney’s race.

The delay is due to an equipment snafu that had Philadelphia elections officials scrambling to buy more supplies during the day and assign workers to hand-open ballot envelopes.

Envelopes were supposed to be run through machines that quickly slice the envelopes open with a blade to then extract their contents. But the extractors were cutting too deep, hitting the ballots themselves, Custodio said.

The mail ballots used this election are larger than last year’s, leaving less room in the envelopes. While the extractors worked fine during testing, “the real-life voter-stuffed ballots were more tightly done than our test ones,” Custodio said.

Workers stopped using the 22 extractors Tuesday, instead pivoting to using older, less-efficient envelope openers and buying more supplies at office supply stores. In addition, 30 workers were opening ballots by hand, Custodio said.

— Jonathan Lai

A few Philadelphia poll workers appeared to be confused Tuesday about the rules governing Pennsylvania’s closed primary elections.

Poll workers are supposed to check the poll books to determine voters’ party registration. Then, a poll worker selects the corresponding ballot. This ensures that registered Democrats vote in the Democratic primary, and Republicans in the Republican primary.

On Tuesday, however, about a dozen voters told election administrators that when they showed up to vote, workers asked them to identify their party instead of consulting the poll books to verify their affiliation, according to city commissioner Al Schmidt. At least one person reported being allowed to select their primary ballot on the screen of the voting machine.

That meant, in theory, that voters could have cast ballots in the wrong primary. But Schmidt said he’s not aware of a case in which that actually happened.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Schmidt said he’d spoken with about 10 judges of election to “remind them of the proper procedures.” Some of them said they hadn’t known the proper protocol, he said. That’s not a widespread problem in a city with 1,703 precincts. But Schmidt said the feedback from voters helps.

”When people contact us, it makes it a little easier to reach out and knock down problems whenever they come up,” he said.

Schmidt noted there’s been a lot of turnover in the past couple years among poll workers who help the city run its elections. They don’t get paid much, and the pandemic has pushed some to stay home. The city provides a bonus for election board workers who take training, but officials can’t compel it, he said.

— Andrew Seidman

— Inquirer staff photographers

A judge has ordered sheriff’s deputies to seize illegal campaign fliers promoting district attorney candidate Carlos Vega that have surfaced at West Philadelphia polling places throughout Tuesday’s primary election.

The order from Common Pleas Court Judge Joshua Roberts determined that the fliers, which are sample ballots purporting to list the Democratic City Committee’s “official” endorsements, were illegal because they failed to disclose who paid for them. The City Committee declined to make an endorsement in the race between Vega and incumbent District Attorney Larry Krasner, but allowed individual ward leaders to do so.

Inquirer reporters and a photographer on Tuesday observed people distributing the illegal ballots promoting Vega in one ward that has endorsed Krasner, as well as another that has not publicly endorsed either candidate. Krasner campaign attorney Adam Bonin told the judge that the fliers were being distributed in a third ward that also endorsed Krasner.

Questionable tactics outside polling places are commonplace in Philadelphia elections, and it is unlikely that the sample ballots will make a significant impact on the race because they appear to be limited to small sections of West Philadelphia.

In a statement, Krasner campaign spokesperson Jessica Brand compared the lack of disclosure around who paid for the sample ballots to the work of the Protect Our Police PAC, an outside spending group backing Vega that has routinely missed campaign finance reporting deadlines. “There is a disturbing theme in this campaign, where groups supporting our opponent don’t want to disclose their spending or identity,” Brand said in a statement.

The Vega campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but an attorney for the campaign told the judge that it had nothing to do with the fliers.

Two of the people passing out the fliers, however, told The Inquirer that they were acting on behalf of the Vega campaign. Rhonda King, 50, who distributed the fliers at West Philadelphia High School, said the Vega campaign supplied her with the ballots, King said. At the West Philadelphia YMCA, a woman who said she was 21 years old but declined to give her name said she was being paid by the Vega campaign to distribute the ballots.

Although workers said they believed they were distributing the ballots for the Vega campaign, it is possible that they were recruited to do so on behalf of a rogue Democratic committeeperson or an outside group promoting Vega.

— Sean Collins Walsh, Ellie Rushing, Timothy Tai, and Juliana Feliciano Reyes

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner spent the first half of Election Day visiting polling places where he was expected to do well with primary voters.

The voting occurs amid citywide concerns about surges in homicides and gun crimes, but turnout has been light. Krasner talked up his efforts at reforming his office, noting that voters in about 10% of the country have elected progressives as prosecutors in the last decade.

“It’s because that’s exactly what people want,” he said. “This is a showdown between the past and the future.”

Krasner encountered state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams aat a polling place in West Philadelphia’s 3rd Ward, which Krasner won in the 2017 primary. Williams said he was hearing from people about Democratic challenger Carlos Vega’s 35-year record as a city prosecutor even before radio ads started airing in the campaign.

“There were so many young guys I talked to in barber shops who knew about Vega’s history,” Williams told Krasner, who wondered how that would impact voter turnout.

“Whether or not they were voting, they’re talking to their grandmoms,” Williams told him. “So they’re influencing a constituency that you and I both worry about.”

State House Democratic Leader Joanna McClinton, a former public defender echoed Krasner’s campaign trail talk about prosecutors in previous administrations “doing anything they need to do to win.” She said Krasner has brought accountability to the city’s criminal justice system.

In Mount Airy’s 50th Ward, where Krasner won in 2017, former City Councilmember Marian Tasco said she didn’t know much about Vega and expected Krasner to win there again. She later gave him a tour of the polling place.

In Kingsessing’s 51st Ward, where Krasner finished second in the seven-candidate 2017 primary, he toured a polling place with City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier and state Rep. Rick Krajewski, thanking Election Day workers for their efforts.

“We’ve got to get the vote out,” Krasner said. “It doesn’t matter who they vote for.”

Krasner moved on. Gauthier lingered a bit. “It matters who they vote for,” she said.

— Chris Brennan

You won’t have to wait until Saturday to find out who won this time.

Just six months after the world waited days for Philadelphia mail ballots to be counted to know who won the White House, elections officials across Pennsylvania said Tuesday’s primary will look more like what voters are used to seeing in years past.

There’s a good chance we’ll know the winner of Philadelphia’s district attorney race Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning — unless the race is so close that it hinges on mail ballots that arrived in the last few days and hours before polls close at 8 p.m.. But the ballots elections workers began processing at 7 a.m. Tuesday should be counted by late afternoon or the evening, with the results published shortly after polls close and before any in-person votes are tallied.

Officials in other counties also said they were expecting mail ballots to be counted within hours, not days.

But that doesn’t mean the election administration headaches revealed last year have been fixed. The quick count expected Tuesday is, in some ways, a smokescreen: Some of the improvement comes from lessons learned last year, but the real difference is that Tuesday’s primary is a low-interest, low-turnout election. There are just many fewer votes to count.

“It will look like we’ve figured it all out, but it’s just the fact that this will be the lowest turnout of the eight [elections] in the four-year cycle,” said Steve Ulrich, elections director in York County. “Our next real test may not come until November [2022].”

» READ MORE: Tonight will probably feel like a normal election in Pennsylvania. That’s not because everything is fixed.

— Jonathan Lai

A motley array of signs for Larry Krasner, Carlos Vega, and judicial candidates plastered the fence outside St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church in Washington Square Tuesday afternoon, as voters — many on lunch breaks — trickled in and out of the polls.

While most turned out Tuesday to cast their vote in the hotly contested district attorney’s race, Justin Dula and Kevin McGillicuddy — political independents — both came to the polls for a say on the ballot questions.

The first two ballot questions — both over state constitutional amendments to disaster declarations — particularly caught Dula’s interest.

“It seems like a pretty big power grab,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Southwest Philadelphia, Davee McCuff walked into the voting booth as an independent after more than 50 years as a registered Democrat.

McCuff visited Hardy Williams Mastery Charter School Tuesday with a main focus on voting on the ballot questions.

Among the questions he could remember, he voted “yes” on the first, seeking to give the state’s General Assembly the power to terminate the governor’s emergency declaration, and “no” on question four, as he disagrees that fire departments should be able to apply for loans.

While he couldn’t vote for district attorney, he said he would have voted for Larry Krasner.

“As a Black man, he kind of has his ear to the concerns of my community,” he said.

— Oona Goodin-Smith and Ellie Rushing

At the Cook-Wissahickon school in the Wissahickon neighborhood, Carlos Vega volunteers, many who live in the neighborhood, passed out literature and greeted voters.

“As long as I have to live in this city I would like to see it safer,” said Madeline Deery, who lives across the street from the school. A big ”Vote Vega” sign is posted in her front lawn.

Deery said in addition to general frustrations with incumbent Larry Krasner, she had served on a jury for a gun possession case and found the prosecutors unprepared.

“There’s no way we could have found him guilty, they presented such a terrible case,” she said. “He’s not doing his job.”

Roger Hamilton, a restaurant owner, described voting as a registered Republican in the primary as being like “a snowflake in a coal mine.”

He voted for his only choice for district attorney, Charles Peruto, and hopes Krasner is defeated, if not today, in November.

“I would not vote for him for dog catcher. That guy is criminal. He doesn’t prosecute anyone.”

John Teague, a community leader in Manayunk survived an attack in the neighborhood a few years ago. He was disappointed with the sentence his attacker got — 30 weekends in jail, he said. For the last few months, Teague has been campaigning for Vega with signs taped to his red convertible. “You can have criminal-justice reform without tossing the baby out with the bath water,” Teague said.

— Julia Terruso

In the Parkwood section of Northeast Philly, there were few Larry Krasner signs to be found. At the Ward 66 polls on Academy Road, typically a high turnout location, fewer than two dozen people had voted in person by 10 a.m.

Mike Morano, 73, voted for Vega because of dissatisfaction with the city’s crime rate and what he saw as Krasner’s lack of support for police.

“I don’t appreciate the way the country’s going,” he said. “The police aren’t always 100% in the right, but you can’t let the system fall by the wayside. With Krasner, he’s too light on the criminals and too strict with the victims — it’s like he’s got it backwards.”

He acknowledged Krasner was likely to win the primary, but said he hoped many would “vote their conscience,” as he did.

One Carlos Vega supporter who voted in a nearby ward said she’d switched her affiliation to Democrat to vote against Krasner. Her son is a police officer, one of many relatives who have been part of the Philadelphia Police Department. She asked not to be named, saying she didn’t want to jeopardize her son’s job or safety.

“We’re a police family,” she said. “Krasner doesn’t have our backs...You can’t look at 7,000 cops in the city and say they’re all bad.”

She voted for Vega because she believes he would stem what she sees as “a revolving door” of arrests under Krasner. She also thinks he’s better able to see things from a police officer’s point of view.

“Krasner, put your butt out there on the street when some of these things are happening and see how cool and calm you’d be,” she said. “Somebody turns around and points a gun at you, you think you’d be so nice about it?”

— Allison Steele

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner exuded optimism about his reelection bid when he spoke with reporters outside his polling place Tuesday morning.

“I feel confident. I feel like our campaign has been very strong,” Krasner said. “We’re getting a lot of love on the street basically all the time.”

He cautioned his supporters not to feel too confident, though, reminding them that they must still turn out and participate.

Asked if he takes responsibility for the surge in gun violence that has gripped the city, Krasner sidestepped the question.

“I think Philadelphians are very sophisticated. They understand exactly what’s happening here and across the united states,” Krasner said. “They want reform. They want the future and I think they’re gonna vote for our campaign.”

If Krasner loses to former homicide prosecutor Carlos Vega, it will be a sign that the progressive prosecution movement he helped start has stalled.

“This is a test for many people of whether progressive prosecution can be pushed back by the forces of the past,” Krasner said.

— Jessica Calenfati and Alejandro Alvarez

At the Cecil B. Moore Recreation Center in the city’s Strawberry Mansion section, turnout Tuesday morning was much lower than usual, according to poll worker Vickie Perkins. She said the location had seen just eight voters in its first two hours, the slowest in her “many years” working the polls.

“We usually have great turnout. I’ve never seen it like this,” she said. “I think it’s from the COVID.”

Karen Smith had never voted in a municipal election until Tuesday. Typically, the 48-year-old accountant who lives in the Strawberry Mansion area sticks to the presidential elections, but this year she came out to vote for District Attorney Larry Krasner because “if you want change, you’ve got to go out and make it.”

At Lovett Library in Mount Airy, typically one of the city’s busier polling stops, a slow trickle of voters started their morning at the polls. Councilmember Derek Green, a committeeman at the division, predicted low turnout but hoped he’d be wrong.

“It’s a great day to vote in the City of Philadephia,” Green said. “November was important but every election day is important.”

Sunny Green Tolbert voted for Krasner, impressed with his attempts to reform the criminal-justice system, which she said will take time to fully implement.

At the Potter-Thomas Elementary School in the Fairhill section of North Philadelphia, a trickle of voters came through Tuesday morning at a pace poll workers described as the slowest they’d seen in years.

One voter, Erica Rose, said she doesn’t typically vote in municipal elections, but she ran into Krasner recently as he was slinging tacos at Loco Pez in University City and discussing his accomplishments. She decided: “you know what? I like him.”

— Anna Orso and Julia Terruso

Voters across Pennsylvania are heading to the polls today, and that may have you wondering — where’s my polling place?

You can find out by plugging your address into a website maintained by the Pennsylvania Department of State.

Here are the instructions:

Find contact information for your County Election Officials here.

» READ MORE: How to find your polling place in Philadelphia and elsewhere

— Jessica Calefati

Some polling places in Philadelphia opened more than an hour after their 7 a.m. start times, as election officials rushed to staff them amid a poll worker shortage.

“We’re dispatching employees, stand-by poll workers, moving people around, and working to open these polls,” Nick Custodio, deputy commissioner under city elections chief Lisa Deeley, said at about 8:15 a.m. “It should only be a handful that are still being taken care of, but we’re working to get everything up and running.”

Some degree of confusion and disarray is normal in the first hour or two — Philadelphia has 700 polling places, each staffed by multiple poll workers with varying degrees of training and experience. Every election, some number of poll workers oversleep, or don’t show up, or some piece of equipment is missing from some location. That means the morning hours are a matter of controlled chaos for the city commissioners, the office that runs elections, as they deploy people to get the polls opened.

This year’s scramble also illustrates the ongoing challenge of recruiting, training, and retaining poll workers.

Record numbers of people signed up to work the polls last year as interest and turnout surged in the presidential election. But most poll worker positions are supposed to be elected — in this year’s elections, including Tuesday’s — and there are large numbers of vacancies across the city and state. County elections officials worry that means they’ll have to continue making last-minute staffing arrangements every election, instead of being able to rely on a full set of poll workers for the next four years.

On Monday, when asked how she felt about the election, Deeley said she was particularly concerned about having enough poll workers Tuesday.

“I’m feeling a little anxious, because we think we’re going to have some poll worker vacancy issues. We have a lot of people that even today are calling and saying that they can’t do it for whatever reason,” she said. “There’s not as much interest or enthusiasm for this election.”

Voters whose polling place isn’t open should contact the commissioners at 215-686-1590, Custodio said.

» READ MORE: Pennsylvania had more poll workers than it could handle last year. Where’d they go?

— Jonathan Lai

All Pennsylvania voters — yes, that includes independents and minor-party members — will be asked to consider four ballot questions on May 18. Two of them are widely considered non-controversial. The other two? A different story.

What would it do? Only Pennsylvania’s governor can end a disaster declaration, like the one the state is under to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. State law gives the General Assembly the option to pass a resolution to terminate the declaration, though the state Supreme Court ruled last year the governor still gets the final say. The legislature can overturn a governor’s veto with support from two-thirds of members.

This proposed constitutional amendment would allow a majority of lawmakers to terminate the declaration at any time, without the governor’s consent. What happens after that is the matter of some debate.

What would it do? This question asks voters to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution to limit a disaster declaration to 21 days. It could only then be continued with the consent of the legislature.

At the moment, a disaster declaration lasts 90 days and can be renewed as many times as deemed necessary by the governor. The measure would also prevent the governor from issuing a new disaster declaration based on the same or similar facts.

What would it do? This proposal amends the Pennsylvania Constitution to enshrine discrimination protections to Pennsylvanians based on race and ethnicity.

What would it do? This is a statewide referendum (as opposed to a constitutional amendment) that would allow municipal fire departments or companies with paid personnel, as well as EMS companies, to apply for a loan through an existing state-run program for volunteer companies. The money can be used to modernize or purchase equipment.

» READ MORE:  Your guide to Pa.’s 2021 primary ballot questions

— Sarah Anne Hughes, SpotlightPA

A bitter and bruising Democratic primary for Philadelphia district attorney comes to a close Tuesday.

Incumbent DA Larry Krasner has spent his first term pushing to reform what he calls an unjust system, focusing on exonerating people wrongly convicted and reducing mass incarceration.

Challenger Carlos Vega, a longtime homicide prosecutor whom Krasner fired in 2018, has promised to continue reforms while returning to a more traditional approach to prosecution and collaboration with police. Vega and his allies in the local police union blame Krasner for surging homicides and gun crimes, which are roughly in line with national trends during the pandemic.

In heavily Democratic Philadelphia, Tuesday’s winner is all but certain to win the November general election against lawyer Chuck Peruto, the only Republican candidate. Krasner is seen as the favorite to win the primary, but political watchers credit Vega with making it a competitive race.

With voters heading to the polls — if they haven’t already cast ballots by mail — here are some factors that will help determine the winner.

» READ MORE: What to watch for in the Democratic primary between Philly DA Larry Krasner and Carlos Vega

— Chris Brennan and Sean Collins Walsh

Polls have opened for Pennsylvania’s primary election. Polling places are open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. As long as you make it in line by 8 p.m., you’ll be able to vote.

If you’re planning to vote in person, you can find your polling place on the Department of State’s website, where you’ll need to enter your county, city, and street. Philadelphia also has its own lookup tool. Check your polling place before heading out to vote, as it may not be the same one you’ve used in the past.

If you requested a mail ballot and haven’t returned it, you can hand-deliver your ballot. to your county elections office. In Philadelphia, there are also 14 drop boxes across the city where you can return your mail ballot.

— Patricia Madej

It’s time for another election.

May 18 is Pennsylvania’s municipal primary, when registered voters across the state will cast ballots for their party’s favored candidates to run in November’s general election.

In Philadelphia, voters will pick their party nominee for district attorney, city controller, and a slew of judicial seats. There are also plenty of local races to decide in Philly’s collar counties. Additionally, Pennsylvania voters will find four ballot questions.

Voter turnout tends to dip during odd-numbered election years and is especially low during municipal elections when there isn’t a mayoral or City Council race, said Patrick Christmas, policy director at the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based nonpartisan good-government group. That doesn’t mean they’re not as important.

“This is one of those really challenging years where turnout drops off,” he said. “We want as many folks to get out there and weigh in on these things as they possibly can, because those offices matter a great deal.”

Here’s what to know about May’s primary election and how to make your voice heard, whether you’re planning to vote in person or by mail.

» READ MORE: Philly Voter Guide: What to know about the races, candidates, and casting your ballot

— Patricia Madej