Unbelievable. Watch this video of Philly’s election officials displaying their level of commitment to their constituents’ right to vote.

Fred Voigt, Philly Deputy Commissioner: “Forget a long line. a long line is not justification for anything except waiting.”

Marge Tartaglione, Chairwoman, Philadelphia Voting Commission: “Did you see, uh, people waiting for baseball tickets all night long outside? did you see the line that they wanted a new iPod, they all waited overnight, they waited in line? You go to the supermarket, you see people waiting in line? Oh, they complain, they grumble, some of them, some of them just talk. so what is the difference?”

I can field that one. The difference is that those people waited overnight because baseball tickets and first-run iPhones come in limited quantities. in other words, there aren’t nearly enough of them for everyone. Votes are not supposed to be exclusive, hard-to-get items. As to the people waiting at the supermarket (for cake, presumably), when is the last time you waited 5 hours for groceries?

The issue here is that the PA Secretary of the Commonwealth, who previously stated that emergency paper ballots should be given out only if every single one of the touchscreen machines at a polling place stops working, has been forced by court order to give out ballots if only one of them does (although he has interpreted the order to mean ballots must be given out when half of the machines break down).

These people are in charge of implementing that ruling.

In addition, it turns out 80% of precincts don’t have any paper ballots, and many don’t plan on following the ruling.

Perhaps McCain really does know something about his odds in PA that we don’t.
_______

Meet Philadelphia's election czar