The city commissioners, who oversee elections, are reviewing the provisional ballots, a process that takes several weeks. Commissioner Al Schmidt - who, along with Commissioner Anthony Clark, dumped Commissioner Stephanie Singer as chairwoman after the election - said that he shares Butkovitz's "interest in the matter" and that a pre-audit meeting will take place next week.
Mayor Nutter will ask his staff to "make a thorough inquiry" into what happened on Election Day, mayoral spokesman Mark McDonald said.
Of the 10 largest U.S. cities, Philadelphia is the only one in which elected officials run elections, according to the government-watchdog group Committee of Seventy, which has called for eliminating the city commissioners as an elected office. That would require an amendment to the Home Rule Charter.
"In the past," McDonald said, "the mayor has mentioned the possibility of transforming some elected offices into administrative offices, but he's not addressing that issue at this point in time."
Butkovitz said his audit would address that issue as well.
Meanwhile, Singer on Monday sent out an email and posted a blog item about "infighting" among the city commissioners. She said that Schmidt and Clark, the new co-chairmen, showed little interest in an idea she had in September to use real-time tracking of provisional ballots on Election Day, which she said would have prevented many problems.
Singer also suggests in the blog post that the state Republican Party was behind the takeover of the city commissioners, and describes the alliance between Clark and Schmidt as "bad news for Democrats."
" @Jan_Ransom
Blog: PhillyClout.com
