Philadelphia held a special election last year to fill the vacancy in the 197th State House seat. Although this is normally a Democratic stronghold, in this election, the only candidate who was on the ballot was the Republican nominee. The Democratic Party backed a write-in candidate; also a very strong Green candidate, Cheri Honkkala, was a write-in candidate.

Criminal charges have been lodged against some of the officials who served at the polls as election officials. See this story about some of the evidence.