Pennsylvania Supreme Court faces a key election as justice warns that a deadlock would be 'disastrous'

Pennsylvania voters will decide Tuesday in an unusually contentious election whether three Democratic justices should remain on the state Supreme Court for another 10-year term, a vote that could result in a deadlocked bench for years if they are removed

Pennsylvania voters will decide Tuesday in an unusually contentious election whether three Democratic justices should remain on the state Supreme Court for another 10-year term, a vote that could result in a deadlocked bench for years if they are removed.

One of those three justices, David Wecht, warned what such a scenario would mean for the critical battleground state.

“It would be disastrous. It’s extremely hard to work with a shorthanded court,” Wecht told NBC News in an interview Friday. “I have experienced the six-member court, and a six-member court resulted in a lot of deadlocks and a lot of stalemates and a lot of increased work for the remaining six. That was just when we were one seat down with the court. If the court were to be three seats down, there would be a lot of 2-to-2 ties.”

Wecht, along with Justices Christine Donohue and Kevin Dougherty, are the three members of Democrats’ 5-2 majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court who are up a retention election Tuesday.

Judicial retention elections, which happen after a decade on the bench in Pennsylvania, are yes-or-no votes that are typically sleepy downballot contests.