Election officials won't post online primary election results
If you are looking for real-time online access to the May 19 primary election results, don't expect to get it from Philadelphia election officials.
While they provided that information during the presidential election in November, it won't be happening this time around.
The reason is time and money.
In November, election officials were pressed by activist Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg and Mayor Nutter to set up a new web site, making it free and available to the public, for the first time, so they could track Obama v. McCain vote-by-vote on election night. They hired a vendor to do so, with the expenses for that contract covered by federal funds since it was a federal election.
Since then, the Philadelphia Board of Elections has been working to create its own in-house online system to provide real-time results, and while it's close to being done it won't actually be finished until sometime this summer.
Meanwhile, facing a cash crunch of its own, the election board said at its regular weekly meeting today that it has no funds to similarly hire a vendor to do the job.
"If the options above don't work, we're sure that as City's experts in election administration you know of other low-cost solutions that would," Seventy President Zack Stalberg wrote in the letter.
The election board wasn't so sure.
"We're not computer experts," said voter registration administrator Bob Lee -- who also noted, "I never used an ATM" so don't expect him to blog or tweet.
Instead, he advised the Committee of Seventy and the League of Women Voters to take a wireless laptop to the election board offices that night, and live blog the information themselves from a public room that shows the real-time results on a wall using a projector.
"We're looking for pro bono assistance here," Lee said.
The bottom line: This primary election may very well wind up being like those in the past, with news organizations paying a fee to get password access to the results, which will then be posted for the public, and those with political connections paying nothing for the same access.
UPDATE: Mayor Nutter has interceded, and now election results will be published online, in real time. The city's Department of Technology will make sure that happens, and cover the costs necessary to do so, according to a spokeswoman for Nutter.
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