Election day double pay to come to end in Phila.

The newly elected commissioners of Philadelphia's election machinery said Wednesday that they would end a practice allowing several hundred election-day workers to collect double pay by filling two different jobs at city polling places.

"We will not be double-paying in the next election or any future elections," City Commissioners Chairwoman Stephanie Singer announced at a public meeting.

The issue was raised by Joseph DeFelice, a state Republican Party organizer, who obtained payroll data from last November's general election and reported that 420 people appeared to have been paid twice - three of them three times - for work at the polls.

Singer and Republican Commissioner Al Schmidt said DeFelice's analysis may have overstated the extent of double-dipping with its treatment of election day interpreters, some of whom also serve as poll workers.

Leaving out interpreters, Schmidt's staff counted 333 people paid for multiple election day jobs in November.

Typically, each of the city's 1,687 polling places has five paid positions: a judge of elections; majority and minority inspectors; a clerk; and a machine inspector. Some divisions also need interpreters.

They are expected to work roughly 14-hour days, opening the polls to the public at 7 a.m. and lingering after the polls close at 8 p.m. until voting cartridges and absentee ballot lists are picked up.

For that, they get $95 a day, $100 for the judge of elections - arguably less than the state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which would pay $101 for 14 hours' work. Bilingual interpreters get just $75.

While it's the commissioners' job to run elections, traditionally they have left it to ward leaders and party committee people - usually Democrats - to recruit people for election boards in each division.

Finding people to take the jobs can be difficult. "It's an ongoing challenge each election," said Matthew Myers, the Democratic leader in South Philadelphia's Ward 39B. "The pay is an issue. I think it clearly needs to be increased. But someone serving in two positions at the same time, I don't think that's really a fair shake."

Myers said he was shocked to hear from Singer that it had happened in his ward.

Carol Jenkins, Democratic leader in University City's 27th Ward, said she often had to offer people extra money to staff the polls in some of her divisions.

"I have allowed double-dipping for people who actually do two jobs, because it is so difficult to find election day workers," Jenkins said. "It's a very, very long day for very little money" - made more difficult, she said, by voting places filled entirely with students, located in dormitories.

Judges and inspectors are elected every four years by voters in each division, but vacancies are frequent. They can be filled either by court order or by "curbstone elections," conducted as polls open.

In some wards and divisions, payroll records indicate, election board workers have been paid for working two jobs at once - serving simultaneously, for instance, as both an inspector and a clerk, thereby pocketing $180 in pay instead of $95.

The practice goes back years, but the volume may have increased recently. City Controller Alan Butkovitz identified just three cases in an audit covering 2006 and 2007, but even then he flagged it as an "abusive and illegal practice," likely violating the City Charter.

DeFelice said he had been raising the issue since 2008, along with related concerns such as election workers with home addresses outside the city, even outside the state.