Philly might scale back a process for catching double votes — because of GOP ‘election integrity’ rules

Philadelphia elections officials are poised to remove or significantly scale back a procedure meant to catch double votes.

Ironically, it’s because of rules Republicans imposed on “election integrity grants.”

Otherwise, the city risks losing millions of dollars.

The procedure, known as poll book reconciliation, compares mail ballots with poll books from Election Day. If a person is listed in the poll books as voting in person but the city also receives a mail ballot from the same voter, the mail ballot is rejected to ensure only one vote per person counts. The process caught dozens of accidental double votes in 2020, but none in the last three elections.

But poll book reconciliation temporarily stops the vote count, sometimes for a day or more. And that appears to conflict with a new state law known as Act 88, which provides state election funding with conditions, including that counting “continue without interruption.”

Now local officials have to decide whether to risk millions of dollars by keeping the procedure in place to catch double votes — or expose anew a vulnerability that was addressed in previous elections.

The city commissioners, who run elections, won’t make a final decision until shortly before Election Day. But they appear likely to scale back poll book reconciliation rather than risk giving the legislature an opening to claw back the $5.4 million in funding.

“We are currently reviewing the impact of Act 88 on our procedures and will adjust accordingly,” Nick Custodio, deputy to commissioners chair Lisa Deeley, said in a statement.

Each voter is only allowed one vote; if you vote by mail, you can’t vote in person, and vice versa.

Poll books are the registry of voters for each precinct, and in-person voters sign them when they check in. With the rise of mail voting, poll books also note whether a voter has already requested a mail ballot or submitted one. If you’ve already done so, a poll worker is supposed to stop you from casting a ballot in person.

But poll books are printed ahead of Election Day. Voters whose mail ballots are received after the books are printed are supposed to get a stamp by their name in the poll book that acts as a warning for poll workers. Those voters should only be allowed to use a provisional ballot or vote on the machines if they hand over their mail ballot to be voided.

» READ MORE: Philly elections officials caught 40 cases of double voting. It’s not fraud, but it’s still a problem.

Mistakes can happen, though, which is where poll book reconciliation comes in. That’s the process of scanning poll books into the voter registry known as the SURE system to note everyone who voted in person. If the poll book says you voted in person, your mail ballot is pulled out and rejected.

In the 2020 primary election, the reconciliation process identified 40 cases of double-voting. Officials also caught some double-votes in the general, but none in the last three elections. Officials believe those double votes are accidents, not intentional fraud — nervous or confused voters who try to vote in person just in case something goes wrong with their mail ballots.

Poll book reconciliation requires pausing the vote count.

When Philly starts counting ballots at 7 a.m. on Election Day, it’s only counting those received before the poll books were printed — the ones the commissioners know for sure are marked in the poll books. This year, Custodio said, the cutoff for the books to be stamped is the Wednesday before the Nov. 8 Election Day.

After that initial batch, counting stops while workers scan poll books. Only after that does the process resume, with any double votes rejected.

The length of the stoppage varies; in the 2020 primary, the count paused for five days.

Since then, officials have made the process more efficient by doing things in batches, scanning the poll books for groups of precincts at a time. After an initial pause that in recent elections took a day or two, the poll book reconciliation and mail ballot vote count processes can run in parallel, one lagging a bit behind the other.

But that pause creates a problem for Philly.

» READ MORE: Pa. counties are worried about the rules for new state elections money, but nearly all applied anyway

As part of state budget negotiations this year, the Republican-controlled legislature passed legislation to ban the use of private money in running elections and instead provide state funding to counties. The move was meant to prevent the kind of private grants that counties received in 2020, which Republicans have criticized as improper and partisan. (Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, a target of conservative ire, helped finance the group behind the money, and large Democratic counties, who have the most voters and mail ballots, received the biggest grants.)

Act 88′s “Election Integrity Grants” come with the requirement that the vote count begins at 7 a.m. on Election Day and “shall continue without interruption” until all ballots have been counted.

Forcing counties to count ballots around the clock was intended to speed things up, after Republicans criticized the long process that has sometimes meant days-long waits for races to be called. Those delays have also given room for right-wing conspiracy theories about vote dumps and stolen elections. Elections officials’ preferred solution, which they’ve advocated since 2020, is to be allowed to start processing or even counting ballots before Election Day.

Custodio said the city is reviewing the law.

Barring some breakthrough, pausing the count for poll book reconciliation comes with the risk that the legislature will take back the $5.4 million Philadelphia is receiving. The commissioners could move forward with the vote count and either significantly scale back the reconciliation process or forego it altogether, knowing double votes could potentially slip through.

Few counties have used a similar process to catch double votes, and it’s not clear whether any others will this time. And the lack of double votes in the last three elections may provide some confidence that voters are getting more familiar with mail ballots.

The commissioners had hoped to avoid the problem altogether through the use of electronic poll books, which could be updated much closer to Election Day and can afterward speed up the reconciliation process. That could mean not having to pause the vote count at all.

Officials wanted to roll out electronic poll books this election, and had even begun training workers to use them, but they announced last month that they weren’t ready to be used. (It was the second time the city had failed to roll out e-poll books, after scrapping its plans in 2019.)

If the technical issues get figured out for future elections, that could solve the problem. The legislature could also change the law, if it sees poll book reconciliation as valuable.

For now, Custodio said, the decision about what to do this election will be made when the commissioners finalize the ballot-counting procedures. That vote is expected the Wednesday before Election Day.