Philadelphia Election Commissioners Nailing Down Final Details For Tuesday's Vote
By Cherri Gregg
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Philadelphia City Commission held its final pre-election meeting this morning to discuss final preparations for Tuesday's general election.
Commission staffers have been busy over the past two weeks processing more than 60,000 voter registration applications, nearly 20,000 absentee ballots, and delivering more than 3,500 voting machines to polling places.
And there's still more work to do, says commission chair Stephanie Singer.
"Between now and Tuesday we will be getting all the materials to the Judges of Elections so that they can take it to their polling places," she tells KYW Newsradio. "We still have a few more voting machines to deliver, and we will still be out making sure that people know that nobody needs photo ID to vote in this election."
Election judges will received their poll books, polling place signs, provisional ballots, and other materials over the next two to three days. Remaining absentee ballots will be delivered on Tuesday.
Other preparations for Tuesday include training thousands of poll workers and more than 300 interpreters across the city.
"There are many voters who speak a language other than English as their primary language," says Singer. "We can provide an interpreter, but we need to know from voters in that division if they need an interpreter. Most of them are Spanish-English interpreters, but we also have Mandarin, Vietnamese, Italian, and a couple of other languages."
As for what voters should do before the election, Singer reminds voters who will cast ballots at a polling place for the first time to bring a form of ID to show at the poll, such as a driver's license or a utility bill.
For more information, go to www.seventy.org.
Singer also advises voters to double-check their polling location. She says nearly 100 precincts in Philadelphia have been moved since the April primary. You can check your polling location by visiting votespa.com or by calling 1-877-VOTES-PA.
