5/23/06 Philadelphia Inquirer B02
Copyright 2006 The Philadelphia Inquirer

Section: PHILADELPHIA

Balance shifts in man vs. machine

By Thomas Fitzgerald, Inquirer Staff Writer

A week after the polls closed, the Democratic primary for the 179th state House district still is not over, but the lead changed hands yesterday during a count of write-in votes.

Tony Payton Jr., the only qualified Democrat on the ballot, moved ahead by 19 votes - according to an unofficial count after the city commissioners declared that his opponent could not claim 48 write-in votes.

The Democratic machine had organized a write-in campaign on behalf of Emilio Vazquez, whom the courts had disqualified for failing to list his employer on an ethics disclosure form. The party's effort featured rubber stamps bearing Vazquez's name to make it easier for voters to write him in at the polls, and it initially appeared successful.

Payton began yesterday 29 votes behind.

But the commissioners decided that 48 stamped or written votes were either illegible or cast for somebody other than Vazquez and, at the end of the day, Payton had a nominal lead of 947-928 votes.

"It's going to come down to the wire," said Christopher B. Sheridan, a lawyer for the watchdog group Committee of Seventy. He monitored seven mind-numbing hours of line-by-line scrutiny of the paper tapes that came from voting machines in the North Philadelphia district.

There are still 20 provisional ballots to count, and the commissioners have to determine if an additional 13 provisional ballots were legitimately cast. Then there are 17 absentee ballots to count.

Another 11 write-in votes appeared to be missing and thus were not counted yesterday; officials said that the computer tapes on which write-in votes are recorded may have remained stuck inside voting machines.

For most of the day, election officials passed the tapes, which look like receipt spools from a cash register, to lawyers for both sides. They argued over each "Emilio Vazquez" written or stamped on the paper - whether the name was too faint or too smudged to be properly read. In cases where a pen was used, the lawyers argued over whether various misspellings of Vazquez's name showed a voter's true intent.

In other cases, the write-in button was pushed on the voting machine but nothing was written or stamped in the space provided on the tape. And sometimes a voter's written-in vote for the 179th District was recorded in the space allotted for another office.

"They were very liberal - anywhere you had an 'E' or a 'V,' they gave it to them," said Payton, 25, a political newcomer. His lawyers objected to 150 write-ins allowed by the commissioners.

The winner of this post-election battle will be the favorite in the fall general election against Republican Troy Bouie to replace 40-year incumbent Rep. William Rieger. The North Philadelphia district is overwhelmingly Democratic.

Most people, including lawyers for the two combatants, expect the election to wind up in court. "Nobody really got yet into the accusations of misconduct yet," Sheridan said.