1st ballot test of governor’s pandemic powers starts in Pennsylvania Updated May 13, 2021; Pennsylvania’s Legislature is now taking its case to the ballot. In the first vote of its kind since the coronavirus outbreak, voters statewide will decide twin constitutional amendments that would give lawmakers much more power over disaster declarations, to apply whether the emergency is another pandemic or natural disaster. The questions were placed on Tuesday’s primary ballot by the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has had a long-running feud with the state’s Democratic governor over his emergency actions during the pandemic. “This is the first opportunity we actually have something tangible, where more than just a handful of sampled people will be able to have an input,” said Jonathon Hauenschild, an attorney at the American Legislative Exchange Council, an association of conservative lawmakers and businesses.