Vote recount won’t be costly to city of Philadelphia

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Philadelphia Council members get briefing on projected vote recount costs. (Tom MacDonald / WHYY)

Philadelphia Council members get briefing on projected vote recount costs. (Tom MacDonald / WHYY)

The City of Philadelphia will be part of an election recount now that the Green Party is asking for a second look at presidential vote tallies.  

The city, however, will not be stuck with the bill for it. 

The campaign of Green Party candidate Jill Stein moved Monday to force recounts in dozens of Pennsylvania voting precincts as it filed an unprecedented formal contest of the state’s presidential vote.

Court papers filed Monday cite an affidavit by a University of Michigan computer scientist stating that results produced by electronic voting machines could’ve been manipulated by malware.

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It won’t be that difficult to review presidential ballot counts in the city, according to Gregory Irvin, Philadelphia voter registration administrator.

“It’s basically what we normally do,” he said. “All it would incur is recounting everything that has been done already … it’s the electronic cartridges that we read from the machine.”

Irvin said the city won’t pay for it in the end.

“This cost is incurred by the state of Pennsylvania, we put out the money and they reimburse it,” he said.

Reimbursement should take only about three weeks, Irvin said.

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