by KYW's Mike Dunn

Mayor Nutter is now supporting a Penn Law student's effort to get voting results available to everyone on election night, and he wants changes in place by the November election.

Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg is waging a campaign to end the system in which voting results, as they come in, are accessed only by people with passwords. He says any 12-year-old with computer experience could figure out how to export voting results to a website so they can be viewed on election night.

But the city commissioners' office, which oversees elections, says altering their system would present tremendous technical hurdles. Staffers there say exporting data to a web page would require periodic system shutdowns during election night, impeding the tally. 

Now, though, city solicitor Shelley Smith says Mayor Nutter wants the voting returns opened up to all, preferably by November:

"The Mayor is committed to making this happen, and to offering the city's resources to find a solution to the problem.  And the mayor's goal is to have this done by election day. So its our hope that we can get it done."

Smith -- who met late last week with staff of the Commissioners office -- is optimistic any technical issues can be resolved as the city Commissioners work with the vendor who supplied the electronic voting machines:

"I am obviously not Bill Gates, and therefore don't have any idea what the technological solution is to this problem. I think it probably is not as simple as Mr. Ackelsberg proposes, although I would like to think that in 2008 its not all that complicated to do."

Smith had earlier ordered the Commissioners -- who are independently elected -- to give a password to Urevick-Ackelsberg. The law student says those codes usually just go to about two hundred local politicians and their friends (see previous story).