Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz will return to Western Pennsylvania Tuesday for a series of campaign stops — including one focused on turning out the early vote in Pittsburgh's university district.
While precise details about the visit were not available Sunday, the Minnesota governor plans three stops in the region Oct. 15. One will be to encourage voters to use a satellite voting office at the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in the city's Oakland neighborhood. Tuesday marks the first day that county election officials will be operating the center, where county voters will be allowed to request mail-in ballots and complete them at the counter — essentially a form of early in-person voting. Walz, a campaign official said Sunday morning, would be encouraging county voters to do so, or to "make their plan to vote as soon as possible."
The Oakland voting location is open to provide voter services from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Thursday, Oct. 17. Three other satellite voting locations will open in the days that follow: The ice rinks at North and South Park and the Homewood branch of the Community College of Allegheny County will all be available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Oct. 19-20 and Oct. 26-27. Similar services are offered daily at the County Office Building at 542 Forbes Ave., Downtown.
Satellite voting offices were used in 2020 when the vast majority of Election Day polling places were closed at the height of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. County officials don't expect such health-related concerns this year but are offering the satellite facilities to make voting as easy as possible. Soldiers & Sailors, located amid the University of Pittsburgh campus, is a prime location to draw in college voters, whose enthusiasm for voting can waver.
Walz plans two other stops on behalf of himself and presidential nominee Kamala Harris in more rural parts of the region: one in Volant, Lawrence County, and the other in Butler. Both of those stops will be in red parts of the state where Democrats hope to make some inroads this November — or at least eat into Republican candidate Donald Trump's margins there. Trump won both counties by roughly two-to-one margins in his 2020 race against Joe Biden. Volant itself is situated near a sizable Amish community: Republicans have made overtures to Amish voters during this election cycle.
Walz made a similar sojourn into rural Western Pennsylvania in early September when he visited a farm in Fayette County. And he and Harris both spent part of a day in Beaver County in mid-August.
Such visits reflect an effort by Democrats to find every vote they can: Recent polling either shows the contest between Harris and Trump as a statistical dead heat, or shows Harris with a lead hovering around the margin of error. But polling in the 2016 and 2020 race understated Trump's actual support once ballots were counted, and Democrats are taking no chances.
Republicans have not been idle either. Trump himself visited Butler just last weekend, and his vice presidential running mate JD Vance was in Johnstown on Saturday.
