Tag: Luzerne County, Pennsylvania

Villecco, 29, wants to interview Luzerne County residents about politics and voting for an ethnographic study. Perhaps not surprisingly, his work will be carried out in the context of the 2016 presidential election — but not only that election. “Essentially I want to ask people why they vote the way they do, what informs about how they think about politics generally,” Villecco said during a visit to the Times Leader last week. “I am interested in the deeper cultural, historical, philosophical reasons” why and how people participate in the political process, he added. “Following the election I was reading almost daily, and Luzerne County started popping up repeatedly, as a harbinger county in Pennsylvania,” Villecco said. “It fits the post-industrial story, and also has the immigrant population,” Villecco added. “When people say ‘I am not political, I don’t know very much about politics,’ I definitely want to speak with them as well,” Villecco said. So far, he has interviewed about 18 people. He had in-depth interviews with about a handful. “It’s going to be about the people who decided to vote, and not people as voters — 2016 drew me here, but that’s not the focus.” To participate, call Villecco at 303-241-1390 or email him at jv6775a@student.american.edu.

Each voting district in the county is supposed to have two Democratic committeepeople — one man and one woman. Right now, Pekarovsky said, 35 to 40 percent of those positions are vacant. He attributes some of that to a declining tide in civic and political activism. “Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t want to get involved anymore,” Pekarovsky said. Filling those vacancies is a key issue on the agenda for an upcoming July 12 party meeting. A rising red tide But Pekarovsky also knows there are larger trends to combat. As we reported in May, registered Democrats still outnumber Republicans in Luzerne County, but things are changing: • Republicans gained 509 voters from last fall until that point, for a new total of 74,911. • Democrats lost 228, bringing the party’s total to 106,328. • Voters with other affiliations or no affiliation increased 498, to a new total 24,297. As reporter Jennifer Learn-Andes also pointed out, the county through last month gained 10,877 more voters than it had in the 2016 primary, which was a presidential election year.