Philly’s Democratic Party Breaks Law for Hillary
Philadelphia will always remain important in the history of the American experiment. The City of Brotherly Love was home to the First and Second Continental Congresses and, for the 10 years following the Revolutionary War, served as our fledgling nation’s capital city before Washington, D.C. assumed the role of home to the federal government. In today’s primary election, Philadelphia’s Democratic Party apparatus seems to have behaved quite undemocratically — and broke a law in the process.
At 7:30 a.m., Matthew Leister, a 26-year-old photographer and Democrat, was complying with his civic duty by voting at Benjamin Franklin High School, just north of Philly’s center. A man at the door to the polling place handed Leister his “sample ballot.” The “Official Democratic Ballot” — in red, white, and blue — had only one candidate for president: Hillary Clinton.
The problem? The “Official Democratic Ballot” is a pro-Clinton campaign tool, and as such, the city’s Democratic Party wasn’t supposed to be handing it out within 10 feet of the polling place. Pennsylvania’s election law didn’t stop Philly’s Democratic Party from attempting to sway voters at Franklin High School or at other sites in the city.
At Fire Engine Company Number 13, just blocks away from Franklin High School, Democratic voterNik Harris, 29, faced some confusion when he received his “Official Democratic Ballot” at just after 3 p.m.
“I didn’t know what I was looking at,” the model and musician originally from New Hampshire recalls. He wondered if he needed to hold onto the paper to vote, or if the paper was a guide on how Democrats should vote.
“I saw Hillary at the top,” he says. “I flipped it over a few times. Bernie’s name couldn’t be found.” He asked the man at the check-in table about the “ballot,” and received no clear answers.
The two people who were handing out the pro-Clinton flyer were inside the firehouse, sitting in the doorway. From their position — not ten feet from the polling place — they handed out their flyer to all voters who walked by, Harris says. “Very shady. Very ambiguous.”
An official at the County Board of Elections says that the agency received numerous complaints of irregularities. The man, who asked to not be identified, says that when a complaint is received, the agency sends someone to the site or calls the judge for elections. He says at least some of the complaints were substantiated, but retracts to “I know we sent people out all the time. I don’t know what they did or saw.”
A lawyer for Philadelphia’s Democratic Committee, who also asked to remain nameless, says that the city’s Democratic leaders chose to endorse Hillary Clinton this year. The Committee, chaired by Democratic U.S. Congressman Robert Brady, did not endorse a candidate in 2008 so as not to “set people against each other.”
This year, it seems, Philadelphia’s Democratic leaders, in their organization that functions as a political action committee, found it fit to set “people against each other” and violate their state’s voting law that only allows campaigning “at least ten feet distant from the polling place during the progress of the voting.”
It is no secret that the U.S.’s Democratic Party has a favorite in this primary season. What is becoming clear is the extent to which that party will act to ensure that favorite ends up on the ballot in November.
“Had I been someone who is not so inquisitive,” Harris says, “I would have seen that ['ballot'] and assumed Hillary is the only candidate.”
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