Philadelphia starts an election recount of 4 percent of divisions

Some snapped pictures, others watched intently, as an official recount of 75 Philadelphia voting divisions took place Friday afternoon at the city's massive voting machine warehouse in Nicetown.

The recount of 4 percent of the city's 1,686 divisions was a result of a campaign launched by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in counties and states throughout the country.

The Philadelphia city commissioners, who make up the Board of Elections, agreed to recount ballots in the 75 divisions, in each of which there were at least three affidavits from voters asking for a recount. They rejected the request for a forensic audit of the machines' software.

The recount will continue Sunday morning at the commissioners' Front and Spring Garden Street offices. Representatives of each party will be invited to see a recount of the provisional, absentee, overseas, and military ballots filed in the 75 divisions.

On Friday, Board of Elections employees broke the representatives from the Democratic, Green, and Republican Parties into three groups of about six or seven to go through the machines. Each group got 25 divisions.

As they went from machine to machine, an employee would print out that machine's voting receipt, which showed every vote made on it. The party representatives stood and watched. Some took pictures and videos. The groups later cross-referenced every receipt with the machine's cartridge.

But what Stein supporters really wanted was the forensic audit.

"The electronic result and the paper result come from the same source. So this is like wanting to get a second opinion and going back to the same doctor," said Rich Garella, a South Philadelphia Stein supporter who filled out an affidavit to get the recount.

Stein won 6,486 votes in Philadelphia, or 0.95 percent of the ballots cast. She won 0.82 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania and 1 percent nationwide.

President-elect Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania by 1.1 percentage points.

The 75 divisions overwhelmingly supported Clinton. That didn't matter to Garella. His concern is the integrity of the machines, he said.

"It's not more or less important to look at a place where Clinton did well or Trump did well or Stein did well," Garella said. "All the votes are going in one basket for the whole state. This is why this is a statewide effort."

Green Party officials have said that they have testimony from computer scientists that voting machines are vulnerable to hacking.

The city commissioners have said that the machines are not connected to the internet. Regardless, they note, there is nothing in the election code that dictates forensic audits.

"They are asking for something we don't do," Commissioner Lisa Deeley said Friday. "They just can't get hacked. They can't." Deeley said the machines do not have WiFi or any way to be connected to the internet.

Representatives from the Republican Party sided with the commissioners, saying the machines could not be hacked.

"It's very standard stuff. No machine malfunctions, no difficulty printing," Tom Stoner, a local Republican, said. "We don't believe there will be any anomalies."

Nevertheless, he said the recount was "fair game."

"People have the right to check," he said.

As the groups made their way through the dozens of rows of beige voting machines, Christmas music played through the loudspeakers.

Board of Elections employees were cleaning out machines that weren't part of the recount, refolding the curtains and tucking them away until the next election.

cvargas@phillynews.com

215-854-5520 @InqCVargas