Pa. State Department refuses blame for leaving Philly voters off the rolls

There is no end to the arguments over the voting process last November.

A total of 27,355 provisional ballots were cast in Philadelphia, more than twice the number for 2008.

The City Commissioners office whittled that list down to about 5,000 names they said were missing from the supplementary poll books of last-minute registrants.

The Department of State has sent a report to the city saying it’s looked for the people who ran into trouble and they were on the state’s system.

“Virtually all of those names were on our list,” says a department spokesman, except one, “and were provided to Philadelphia for printing in their supplemental pollbooks.”

“It does appear that those pollbooks didn’t get to the precincts,” contionue Ron Ruman. “At least that’s how it looks from here.”

Philadelphia had a higher number of last-minute voter registrations — which normally show up in the supplemental books.

Philadelphia Commissioner Stephanie Singer objects to the idea that human error in her office caused the problems on Election Day. She maintains the problem with the supplemental books goes back to Harrisburg and the Department of State.

“The program that creates those sheets, which is the responsibility of the Department of State, did not function as it is supposed to,” says Singer.

Philadelphia County did not finish processing all of its voter registrations until Nov. 1. Singer says the latest registrations to be processed were the ones that didn’t show up.

There were also about 500 young people who turned 18 just in time to vote but were not added to the rolls. Singer says that error did happen in Philadelphia and the office knows what to do next time around.