So many City Council members are running for Philly mayor and it could delay your mail ballot this fall

They’re not even mayor yet, and they’re already getting in the way of the next governor and senator.

A series of resignations from Philadelphia City Council in recent weeks by politicians jockeying to run for mayor next year has left multiple vacancies to be filled. Those seats would ideally be filled as soon as possible, to avoid leaving hundreds of thousands of residents without representation on Council.

But doing so would delay sending voters their mail ballots for this year’s general elections for U.S. Senate, governor, and more. Those ballots are already being prepared, and there are no legal challenges preventing them from going out as early as Sept. 19. That’s the 50-day mark before the Nov. 8 election that begins the mail voting period under Pennsylvania law.

But if Council President Darrell L. Clarke calls for the newly open seats to be placed on the November ballot, mail ballots would instead be delayed by more than a week — or potentially much longer. That’s because election law gives candidates time to file paperwork to run, as well as challenge their opponents’ eligibility in court.

In the meantime, voters who could otherwise be casting ballots — and the campaigns that would target them to bank as many votes as early as possible — would have to wait.

It’s a situation created by a mismatch of legal timelines and tension between imperatives: ensuring representation for residents vs. allowing maximum time and access to voting this election.

There’s not a specific date when mail ballots must be sent out, but Pennsylvania election law starts the mail voting window 50 days before Election Day. That’s Sept. 19 this year.

That’s when voters are supposed to be able to go to county elections offices to request and receive mail ballots in person, and ideally when counties start mailing ballots to voters.

It doesn’t always happen that way. In the handful of elections since Pennsylvania dramatically expanded mail voting in 2020, counties have often missed the 50-day mark. That’s usually because legal challenges are preventing the candidates from being finalized, such as when a 2020 Democratic challenge to the Green Party presidential ticket delayed ballots until late September.

» READ MORE: Another election is coming and there’s still uncertainty around Pennsylvania’s mail voting law

But this year, unusually, there are no legal challenges to any of the candidates in Philadelphia. The city’s candidates and the statewide candidates are set.

So Philly has a rare opportunity to actually offer a full 50 days of mail voting this election — unless something gets in the way.

Under the City Charter, the Council president fills a vacancy by putting it up for an election to serve out the remainder of the term. But it takes at least 18 days for candidates to officially get on the ballot after Clarke issues a writ of election. And there are fewer than 18 days before the Sept. 19 opening of the 50-day window.

“It would impose about a three-week delay on the city’s ability to finalize the ballot,” said Adam Bonin, a Democratic election lawyer in Philadelphia. Parties have 15 days to nominate candidates, and then there are three days to file court challenges.

If there are challenges that have to be adjudicated, it could drag things out longer.

» READ MORE: There are four Council vacancies and more could be coming. Here’s what happens next.

Part of the issue concerns state election law outside Clarke’s control: He can’t put the vacancies on the ballot more than 60 days before the general election.

For the Nov. 8 election, then, he would have to wait until at least Friday. If Clarke issued the writ that day, the first chance he could, it would still be Sept. 27 at the earliest before ballots could go out — eight days later than they currently can.

So it’s simply not possible to call a special election, which is technically how the Council seats get added to the ballot, and then have mail ballots go out 10 days later. Not when it takes at least 18 days for candidates to be finalized.

“Council President Clarke takes his duty and responsibilities under city law seriously regarding any vacancies on Council,” spokesperson Joe Grace said. “He’ll act in accordance with the law at the appropriate time.”

A spokesperson for the city commissioners, the office that runs elections, declined to comment on the timeline or when voters should expect to receive ballots.

A delay in mailing ballots to voters from Philly — the largest city and county in the state and its largest source of Democratic voters — isn’t a crisis, Bonin said. But it does reduce the time voters have to cast ballots, tighten the window for voters outside the state to receive and return their ballots, and potentially complicate some campaign decisions.

Another option is to not put any Council seats on the November ballot. But two of the vacancies so far are for district seats, meaning hundreds of thousands of residents, including wide swaths of Kensington, North Philadelphia, and Northwest Philadelphia, wouldn’t have direct representation on Council — potentially for months. The other vacancies are for at-large seats that represent the entire city.

» READ MORE: The 2023 race for Philly mayor has begun. Here’s who’s running.

Yet another option would be to hold special elections for the Council seats sometime between this election and the next one, filling the seats soon but without delaying this year’s ballots. But standalone special elections are generally seen as a poor option, because they are expensive to run and usually have very low turnout.

And Clarke could also put only the district seats and not the at-large ones on the ballot this fall. Ultimately, he will have to decide whether to delay sending out mail ballots in this major general election — or let important offices sit empty.

“There’s a lot of important values at stake here, because, look, we want to give voters as much time as possible to vote by mail,” Bonin said. “It is convenient, millions of people have relied upon it in past statewide races, we want this system to work, and we want all those ballots returned in time. At the same time … democratic representation also matters.”

“These are important values,” Bonin said, ”and so it’s going to require some wisdom and some thoughtfulness to do what’s right here.”

Staff writers Anna Orso and Sean Collins Walsh contributed to this article.