by KYW's Mike Dunn
A Penn law student is waging a campaign to get city elections officials to make voting results available to the public on election night.
Dan Urevik-Ackelsberg says voting returns should not be kept under lock and key:
"If there's one piece of information that a government publishes that should be public, free, and easy for everyone to see - its voting returns."
But right now city commissioners who oversee elections in Philadelphia allow election night access to those returns only to those with passwords, mainly incumbent politicians and friends. News organizations pay more than $1,000 per election for access.
Urevick-Ackelsberg says the commissioners need only export these numbers to a web page:
"It's a problem that any 12-year-old with a couple of hours of experience on the Internet could probably fix. It's a very simple fix, you just export the data."
The city commissioners insist there's no simple fix, but - spurred on by Urevick-Ackelsberg's open access campaign - they say they're looking at it.
E-Mail Story
Print Story
