This voting mess has city sweating ballots

THERE'S a whole lot of finger-pointing but few answers for why a massive number of provisional ballots were cast locally in last week's presidential election.

A total of 27,100 Philadelphia voters had to cast provisional ballots because their names weren't in the poll books. That's more than double the 12,733 who voted provisionally in the 2008 presidential election.

City Commissioner Al Schmidt - who downplayed the reports of high provisional voting on Election Day, Nov. 6 - said that one reason for the problem could be a glitch in the production of the poll books, which are printed by a private firm with data from a state-maintained database of registered voters. But Ronald Ruman, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, said the information for the books had been extracted by the standard process.

"As far as we can tell, we sent them the information we had," said Ruman, "We sent it the way we always do. If there was a problem, it wasn't here."

Ruman said no other counties had problems on the same scale as Philadelphia.

Provisional voting means the voter fills out a paper ballot, which is not counted until the voter's registration is confirmed. Several things could have contributed to the uptick in provisional ballots, including omissions in the poll books or the supplemental lists, voters going to the wrong polling places or election workers not knowing about or finding the supplemental lists, which include late-processed registrations.

The supplemental pages are printed in-house by the city commissioners. Committee of Seventy vice president Ellen Kaplan noted that the commissioners had a backlog of registrations to process heading into Election Day.

"This is why we said it's got to be investigated and the results have to be made public," Kaplan said. "Many voters who had to vote provisionally are upset because they know their ballots have not been counted yet and it matters to them. People don't want to vote provisionally."

Schmidt said the fact that 650 of the city's 1,687 voting divisions had moved since 2008 may have led to confusion over where to vote. If voters showed up at the wrong polling place, they wouldn't be in the book and would be forced to vote provisionally.

He also said that some people may think they're registered when they're not, due to incomplete or unsent applications. Roughly 30 percent of the provisional ballots cast in 2008 were by unregistered voters.

Commissioners are now reviewing all the provisional ballots - a process that will take several weeks, Schmidt said. Mayor Nutter has expressed concerns about the election, but has launched no formal investigation.

Schmidt said that he was unaware of any polling places not getting supplemental pages. But Nicole Young said she had to wait for four hours until her West Philadelphia polling place got supplemental lists that proved she was registered to vote.

When she wasn't in the poll books, Young, 27, was initially told to vote provisionally.

"I refused to vote provisionally," said Young. "This election is too important for my vote not to be counted."