Philadelphia to use faster mail-in ballot-processing machines

Driving the news: Philadelphia City Commissioners are preparing to use around six modern envelope-opening machines in the upcoming election, which will complement the city's fleet of machines.

• That's despite lingering concerns about potential problems with the new equipment.

By the numbers: Philly voters had requested more than 186,000 absentee and mail-in ballots as of Thursday, per state data.

• The new machines have the potential to open up to 40,000 envelopes an hour, compared with around 3,600 for the old machines, City Commissioner Seth Bluestein said at a public meeting this week.

Yes, but: With humans operating the machines, real-world conditions can significantly reduce those open rates, Bluestein noted.

How it works: The new machines will open some mail-in ballot envelopes, but the ballots must still be counted in a separate machine.

• The machines were tested during a past primary, but on a smaller scale. So it remains to be seen how much faster Philly election officials will count the mail-in ballots next month.

Threat level: The new equipment has the potential to damage ballots, City Commissioner Lisa Deeley warned during the recent meeting.

• When Philadelphia used some of the faster envelope-opening machines in the 2020 primary, "several thousand" ballots were damaged, Deeley said. Election workers then had to hand-correct them, which was a time-consuming process.
• "This is a serious election, not a race," Deeley said. "We do not need to take unnecessary risks."

The other side: Bluestein said the faster machines, some of which were recently purchased, were tested and did not damage ballots.

• He added that the newer machines have the same risk of damaging ballots as the older, slower machines.

Flashback: In 2020, ballot counting in Philly dragged on for four days before the presidential race in Pennsylvania was called for President Joe Biden.

• But then-President Donald Trump and Republicans seized on the delay to fuel false claims that the election was stolen.

What they're saying: The more time it takes Philly to count ballots, the greater the likelihood of the spread of disinformation and threats to election workers, Bluestein said.

• "The world is looking to find out when the [presidential] results will be known in Pennsylvania and in Philadelphia in particular," he said at the meeting.

The bottom line: The 2024 election will test whether the new equipment, and other election changes, will be enough to avoid a repeat of 2020.