Philly's Ballot Box Blog

Today Aaron Kreider, our online election computer programmer, officially released the software on sourceforge.net:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/onlineballot/

You can learn more about Aaron and his good work at CampusActivism.org

Matthew Teague's in-depth article in the June issue of Philadelphia Magazine is the most important piece of journalism on the casino issue to date. He breaks down the very complicated web of financial and political alliances that drove forth the drafting of Act 71 and the process of site selection for the proposed casinos. The article is well researched, and it's conclusions are devastating:

In a live TV interview SugarHouse professional spinster John Miller says that if Philly's Ballot Box recieved over 10,000 votes it would be miraculous. Miracle ahieved! He goes on to make himself to show us how down and dirty his industry will go, making false allegations on citizens efforts.

A total of 13,319 successful votes were cast. A successful vote only included registered voters and were cross-referenced with our secure database to assure that each voter only voted once. Security mechanisms were in place to assure the integrity of the process (see Phillys Ballot Box Voting System). No attempts at hacking the system or any malicious activity was registered throughout the process.

Of those who successfully voted, 12,592 (95%) voted yes for a 1,500-foot buffer and 727 (5%) voted no.

Click here for complete results

Join us at our offices -- 230 North 2nd Street -- at Monday at 3pm to hear the election results.

First they said it shouldn't be done. Then they said it couldn't be done.

They said that we, the people of Philadelphia, had no right to vote on whether there should be a restriction on where casinos could be built in our city.

We gathered 27,000 signatures to put Question #1 on the ballot, and they got a judge to knock it off.
We pushed City Council to vote Question #1 onto the ballot, and the mayor vetoed the vote.
We pushed City Council to override the mayor's veto, and the state supreme court knocked it back off, without so much as a word of explanation.

Wow, there are lots of votes in those ballot boxes. We've finished our fourth day of verifying ballots, and there's probably another half day to go.

It's a long process, but we're being very careful. The voters of Philadelphia entrusted us with their opinions on Question #1 -- "Yes" to support a 1500-foot buffer around casinos, and "No" to oppose it. We treat every vote the same, and anybody who wants to come and watch is welcome here.

A quick explanation: For each ballot, a volunteer types in the information that the voter filled out on the outside of the envelope, and our system searches through the voter database for it. If you voted online last Tuesday, you did the same thing we're doing now for the paper ballots.

The ballot only counts if it matches a valid Philadelphia voter registration and if that voter didn't already vote. When we can verify a ballot, which is most of the time, the vote goes into the database (the voter's individual information doesn't go with it) and the voter is marked off so he or she can't vote again.

In case you're wondering, we don't have a running tally -- we volunteers have to wait for results just like you do.

We keep all the ballots, separated from their envelopes, and seal them back into the box they came out of so we can prove the job's been done right.

You can also watch us at work at http://www.phillysballotbox.org/live. You may notice that in some ways, we act as if we're working at a casino: Drop something, pick it up, show it to the camera. No bags past the entrance of the room. Keep everything visible.

But in our case, we're not doing it to protect some gambling company's profits.

We're doing it to protect the voices of Philadelphia, the voices that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court tried to silence, the voices of the many thousands of people who voted on Question #1.

Stay tuned.

Wednesday morning, our telephone hot line room was converted into the ballot counting room. All the drawers were taped shut, and all the waste baskets were removed. A surveillance camera has been set up, and we are going through the process of meticulously validating and inputting every verified ballot into the computer system.

Through out Election Day, we kept hearing rumors that some polling places were using ballots that didn't have the "REMOVED BY COURT ORDER" sticker over Question #1, the casino referendum. At our post-election party, one of our volunteers said that she was able to cast her vote by simply pressing the YES button through the sticker.

Well, it seems that the city has not only counted these rogue Question #1 votes, but that they've reported them (scroll to question section at bottom of page) as well.

1194 votes on Question #1 were recorded. 835 (69.93%) were in favor of a 1500-foot buffer, and 359 (30.07%) voted No.

The first ballot box has just arrived. A couple who was working a polling location in Northeast Philadelphia brought it in, exhausted after a long day in the field. After sealing the slot with security tape and a signature over it, Kathy checked off the list and placed it in our designated box collection area. And this process is being streamed lived over the internet (and recorded). Watch live webcam broadcasting the bringing in of the ballot boxes here: http://phillysballotbox.org/live.

I came back to Headquarters after a couple hours working the box in the sun. I had a moment to rest and eat some lunch. Walking to the back of our office I heard the rings of our hotline. Volunteers were diligently answering the phones and recording peoples' votes. One after the other voters have been calling from 7 AM on (all the way to 10 PM). Our hotline coordinators, Meredith Warner and Lena Helen, have been training volunteers and plugging them in, and some of our Hotline answerers including Scott Mechanic worked 9 hours with just a half hour break.

We've just added some new photos to the Photo Gallery. Chris has been running around like crazy all morning, talking with volunteers and voters and snapping great photos of the Ballot Boxes in action. Folks out in the field are energized and having a great time. Chris just went back out, so we'll have some more photos from this afternoon later in the day.

Karim and myself just got back from Famous Deli at 4th & Bainbridge. For the uninitiated (like me) -- that's where Philadelphian politicians of all stripes come to rub elbows with each other.

There we received votes from Chaka Fattah, Bob Brady, Jannie Blackwell, Mike O'Brien, Darnell Jones, Lynne Abraham, and countless others. Michael Nutter and Tom Knox (see previous blog post) had already voted.

Here at Election Headquarters we've been going strong since about 6am this morning. Morgan, Aaron, Nick and I have been babysitting the web site and secure online voting system. Traffic has been high and increasing by the hour. The server has been holding up fine, and we've kept busy troubleshooting little odds and ends on the web site, like getting the RSS Feed configured for this blog!

All morning people have been coming up to our ballot box telling us they wanted to vote. They are people with varied opinions about where (or if) casinos should be placed -- folks of all stripes and all walks of life. In two hours we estimate the three of us outside City Hall have gotten about 200 votes!

So far, in calling others around the city, no incidents of any provocation has occured. People have had a lot of interest and many people knew pieces of what happened (standing next to where the Metro is being handed out helps us, too, as we're on the front page).