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Archive: November, 2012
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As the last polling places are counted for Philly's state House and Senate candidates, it's looking like people in the city are, across the board, pretty content with the incumbents. Philly's lone Republican legislator, longtime Rep. John Taylor, managed to fend off a strong challenge by Democrat John Dunbar, while Democratic Reps. Kevin Boyle, a freshman, and Ed Neilson, an uber-freshman having just been installed in a special election in April, both won over unusually (for lefty Philadelphia) strong Republican challengers.
CP caught up with Neilson outside a polling place in Northeast Philly. He said that in just a few months in office, he's managed to make a mark with his constituent services. His office has already seen 2,200 requests for assistance.
As if on cue, voter Teresa McDonough walked by on her way out of the polling place. "We had a streetlight, this is the second time it's been out. For months we were given the runaround. Then he got on it and got it fixed," she said, thanking Neilson for his help.
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Hundreds and perhaps thousands of voters across Philadelphia, both newly registered and veteran, have not been found on the voter rolls and are being forced to cast provisional ballots that may not be counted.
Precincts are going through far more provisional ballots than anyone can remember ever being needed in the past.
Out of 20,284 provisional ballots cast statewide during the 2008 general election, 10,334 were ultimately rejected, according to data provided by the Pennsylvania Secretary of State that did not include data from Philadelphia and two other counties.
Provisional ballots are not counted until days after the election, at which point county election officials check each ballot and decide whether it is valid. Some who were forced to cast provisional ballots had their voter registrations in hand.
Heather Kelly, 34, has been election judge at the 66th Ward, 46th Division since she was 18 years old, and she's never seen an election like this one. Longtime voters, people she'd seen year after year, had suddenly vanished from the poll books — listed at their former addresses. She said calls to the City Commissioners office and Committee of Seventy didn't provide much help. "One in particular is a police officer that's been up here for 10 years. I know him, I see him every day and he had his driver's license here. But he's not in my book." He was told to go vote at his address from 10 years back. Same with an elderly woman, whose sister appeared in the book while she did not. Her old polling place was on South Seventh Street. "I don't like sending people down there. And they're older women," Kelly said. All told she said more than 20 people had left without voting; a few submitted provisional ballots but were warned they likely wouldn't count.
Meanwhile, around Temple University the problem was exponentially worse. Some polling places had more than 100 provisional ballots filed; at one polling place, at least one in five ballots was filed provisionally because the voters were not listed in the voting rolls. The polling place ran out of provisional ballots and people had to wait while more were retrieved.
Vanessa Wright of PennPIRG says she abruptly shifted her get-out-the-vote operation on Temple's campus to focus on monitoring the situation with provisional ballots. "There's clearly a problem here," she said. "our main concern is making sure that people's voices are heard, and encouraging young people to vote. At one point there were 15 people [waiting at the polling place at 10th and Oxford] waiting for provisional ballots because they ran out. We want to make sure people have a good first voting experience." She said it didn't help that the City Commissioners' phone line seemed to be busy most of the day. Penn PIRG is collecting names of voters required to vote provisionally. Groups had been contemplating legal action, but Stephanie Wein of Penn PIRG said the judge at the Central Election Court had declined to hear a complaint this evening.
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Philadelphia has become the epicenter of conservative hysteria over bad things Democrats (who happen to be black) allegedly do to win elections: voter fraud! Voter intimidation! An Obama mural at one precinct (a Northeast Philly public school cafeteria) and a flap over Republican voting inspectors being denied access to polls added further fuel to the fire.
But Fox News (and, perplexingly, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News) seemed less interested in the bigger story: hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Philadelphians registered to vote were denied access to regular ballots and told to cast provisional ballots, which are not counted until days after the election--if they are counted at all.
Fox News, like outlets from around the country, descended upon a North Philly polling place at 13th and Fairmount to answer an ostensibly burning question: was the marginal New Black Panther Party causing trouble? "New Black Panthers back at Philly voting site," blared the front page of Fox News' website.
Updated at 7:20 PM
Since earlier today, the Committee of Seventy, which monitors Philadelphia elections, has been reporting stories of voters who didn't appear on poll books when they showed up to vote.
"The issue of registered voters coming to the polls in Philadelphia today - only to find their names were not listed in the poll books – was raised in a court proceeding in Philadelphia Elections Court late today.
A short time ago, Common Pleas Court Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe turned down a request from Organizing for America, a grass roots arm of the Democratic National Committee, which asked the court to order the City Commissioners to distribute additional provisional paper ballots to polling places throughout the city.
Seventy urged the court to order the city to provide more provisional ballots to any polling place that needed them - since voting could go on in some places for hours. (The polls close at 8 p.m., but all voters in line at 8 p.m. are permitted to vote.)"
A few hours ago, the Daily News reported that the Philadelphia City Commissioners, who oversee elections, said that the problems "were not widespread."
But reports are still coming in, and City Paper's own reporting seems to confirm irregularities in several parts of the city.
* Samantha Melamed visited the 66 Ward, 46th Division in the city's northeast section, where election judge Heather Kelly told her that as many as 20 voters whom she knew well from previous elections showed up to find that their names were no longer in the book. Melamed reports that this judge called the City Commissioners and was told that provisional ballots would not be counted. In some cases, Kelly discovered, that these voters were registered at old addresses - 10 years old in one case.
Updated: Samantha reports more than 100 provision ballots in the 20th ward, 9th division. Over 50 provisional in the 20th ward, 9th divison -- near Temple, but some of the voters are non-students and previous voters, according to the election judge.
* Committee of Seventy told this reporter of at least one case of a polling place running out of provisional ballots. Normally, polling places are given 75. Reports are apparently still coming in to Seventy of names not being in poll books.
* Daniel Denvir reports that a source close to the Obama campaign told him that over 200 provisional ballots had been reported at University of Pennsylvania polling places and over 400 at Temple University.
Updated: Denvir reports that election judge Christine Abbot in Ward 27, Divisions 11 & 3 (near Penn campus) had more than 100 provisional ballots in her two the third divsions because people were not in the polling books.
* This reporter spoke with Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez who reported similar problems in the city's 43rd ward. Additionally, she says 6 divisions were moved without notice to voters. Quinones-Sanchez says volunteers for her office were out until 11 last night informing voters themselves of the change.
Many Philadelphians who believed they were registered to vote received a surprise today: Their names weren't in the voting book at their polling place. As a result, they were asked to vote by provisional paper ballot. Committee of Seventy now sees the issue of registered voters being required to vote by provisional ballot as being an even greater concern than voter-ID-related problems at the polls today. They've been getting reports that many voters, recently registered, aren't listed in the poll books, and some voters have left rather than cast a paper ballot.
One question is: Once you've cast a paper provisional ballot, are you done voting? According to the Pennsylvania Voter ID law, voters have to take a follow-up step of affirming their identities within six days if voting by provisional ballot. But today's ballot problems aren't necessarily ID related. A call to the state voting hotline yielded, after 10 minutes on hold, the answer: "I dunno." And the city commissioners' number is coming up busy.
For what it's worth, here's what the state's voting site has to say on the matter:
How Do I Know if My Provisional Ballot Counted? Within seven days after the election, the County Board of Elections will examine your provisional ballot to determine if it is valid. After this seven-day period, you can find out if your provisional ballot was counted, partially counted or not counted. If your provisional ballot was not counted, you will be told why it was not counted. To learn of your provisional ballot’s status, you may call 1-877-VOTESPA or select voter services.
To receive this information, you will be asked to provide your provisional ballot identification number, which can be found on your provisional ballot identification receipt.
Seen a sign like that around Philly?
The signs, paid for and distributed by a group going by the name "PA CAN," the motto "Free Markets for Free People," and which purports to be "Pennsylvania's Grassroots Small Business Advocate," claim to offer a $1,000 reward for information leading to a conviction for voter fraud.
They've been cropping up around the state: The Express-Times reports today that at least one formal complaint has been filed, in Easton, claiming that the signs amount to voter intimidation.
They arrived in Center City Philadelphia last night, thanks to Republican ward leader Mike Cibik, who was to be seen casually placing them around various polling sites in his 5th ward, which contains parts of Center City and the Gayborhood.
Cibik said he'd gotten them from 27th Republican ward leader Matt Wolfe, who confirmed this, saying that "Some guy I don't really know" had delivered them to his house not long ago.
Asked whether he thought voter fraud was a real problem in Philadelphia, Cibik again shrugged. Four years ago, he says, one of his minority inspectors reported having seen signatures in the voter log book before the polls opened. Nothing came of the incident.
Despite a long history of allegations of voter fraud in Philadelphia, few incidents have ever been reported or discovered. A recent report by City Commissioner Al Schmidt claiming to have found "hundreds" of voting irregularities showed no new proof that voter impersonation had occurred.
Asked whether he thought the signs would survive the night in the heavily-Democratic neighborhood, Cibik answered cheerfully: "Maybe some of them."
If Twitter mentions were votes, Gov. Mitt Romney would be dominating in Pennsylvania and ... Massachusetts? That's according to a map created by the Oxford Internet Institute, based on geocoded tweets from the past month. However, President Obama wins the Twitter war nationwide. Here are the details.
Seth Lyons, 25, hadn't canvassed or volunteered for the Obama campaign before today. "But because it got so close in Pennsylvania, I thought I should do something on my day off." He was one of dozens to show up at the Obama office on South Street today, to help get out the vote.
Curtis Kise, a volunteer organizer at the campaign office, was training the last-minute volunteers. He told them the turnout push was critical. "For the most part, these are weak voters [we're contacting today]. They probably didn't vote in the mid-term elections in 2010. So that's why we're shaking the trees right now and trying to get them to fall out."
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The names of registered Philadelphia voters are not showing up on voter rolls and poll workers are instructing them to vote using provisional ballots, according to voters and poll workers in West and North Philadelphia. Provisional ballots, if they are counted, are not counted until up to seven days after the election.
"We think it's a real concern," said a staffer at The Committee of Seventy, which monitors elections in Philadelphia. Voter ID, he says, is "not the central problem in Philadelphia today: [it's] the messy administration of this election. The phones are just ringing off the hook. We're fielding calls about people who are not in the polling books."
Some poll workers are not even instructing people that they can file provisional ballots, and other voters are reportedly just walking away in frustration.
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