Error-ridden Working Families mailing causes election confusion
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Pennsylvania Working Families, a labor-backed progressive group, accidentally sent a reported 30,000 Philadelphians a mailing directing them to the wrong polling places. Unsurprisingly, the mass-mailed error has created a bit of a mess.
Pennsylvania Working Families, a labor-backed progressive group, accidentally sent a reported 30,000 Philadelphians mailings directing them to the wrong polling places. Unsurprisingly, the mass-mailed error has created a bit of a mess.
Election watchdogs at Committee of Seventy report that as of 12:15 p.m. today their hotline has received 215 calls from Philadelphians, most of whom requested information about polling-place locations.
"While we get these calls every Election Day, there are far more than usual today," e-mails Seventy's Ellen Mattleman Kaplan. "A number of callers got incorrect information from the PA Working Families flyer."
The mailers were clearly intended to encourage likely Democratic voters to go to the polls and oust Republican Gov. Tom Corbett. Instead, they have spread confusion among the very Philadelphia voters that Democratic gubernatorial Tom Wolf needs to win. Working Families told the Inquirer that it set up a phone bank over the weekend to call voters and correct the misinformation.
