Early Morning Musings on Election Night, 2017

So, as the front page on the right makes fairly clear, Election Night can be a bit of a heavy lift for me.

What are called "off-year" elections, are very much on years for local journalists.

And despite the fact that it is 1:30 a.m. and I have written 13 election stories in the past few hours, I thought I might share a few thoughts.

First, look how much your vote counts in local elections.

By our calculations, candidates won by single digit results in several races, with votes as few as two making the difference Tuesday night.

We'll see if they survive any challenges, but the election of Democrat Tyrone Robinson in Upper Pottsgrove by a two-vote margin is about as close as it gets.

The race for Birdsboro mayor was decided by seven votes.

In Pottsgrove, incumbent Rick Rabinowitz lost his seat on the Pottsgrove School Board by 16 votes.

I will be sorry to see him go.

He's a good board member, does his research, asks good questions and challenges the administration when he thinks he should.

He surely lost votes in the primary because of his role in the dispute about prayer at graduation last year, but although it was handled a bit clumsily, he was right from a legal standpoint. He took a stand for the right thing and paid a pretty stiff price.

For all the same reasons, I will also be sorry to see Tom Hylton leave the Pottstown School Board.

This was not a good year to run as a Republican in most boroughs.

But Hylton is no more a Republican than a Democrat. He is a unique individual with a unique perspective, and if you can get past the quirks, he brings a thoughtful (and forceful) point of view to a school board that could use some more of that.

Speaking of running as a Republican, I would be remiss if I did not observe that Democrats made big gains in local elections this year in what I think has to, in some part, be chalked up to disaffection with President Donald Trump.

In the region's more diverse boroughs -- like Pottstown and Phoenixville -- Democrats won all the seats. And in Chester County, for the first time since the 1700s, they won a bunch of county-wide row offices as well.

Even in the Republican bastion of the Owen J. Roberts School District, two Democrats won seats on the school board -- albeit by slim margins, but let's not forget, this is OJR.

And in Boyertown School District, where a Trump-like approach was adopted by some advocates for one slate of candidates, those candidates lost two out of four races.

This whole democracy thing continues to be pretty interesting.

Here are some Tweets from election day.