2026 Midterm Elections: Explaining Philadelphia's ballot questions

All right. Thank you, Bob. Well, as we've been saying, it is election day and now the polls are open. We want to focus on some of the key races that we're seeing in Pennsylvania and across the tri-state area. Yeah. So what's at stake and what you should know before you head to the polls? Lauren Cristella, the CEO of the Committee of Seventy, is here to break it all down for us. Very busy day for you all today, huh? Sure is. Yeah. So, you know, we just saw our Hank Flynn. He's in Bucks And, you know, there's... Signs everywhere. People are handing out paraphernalia before people go into the polls. That's all okay to do, right? That's all on the up and up. Yeah, as long as they're staying 10 feet outside of the room where polling is actually happening, that's all legal. Got it. And then when it comes to, you know, knowing where your polling location is, luckily the weather's nice, but do you still recommend that people check before they go? Always check. You never know if anything happened overnight or if there was a reason to move locations. So vote.pa.gov or you can always go to 70.org. And there are judges or people observing at the polling places or what's the atmosphere like? There were monitors from the DOJ coming, but they're not going to be inside polling places. They'll be outside just like anybody else. There are certified poll watchers. in every election. Those are certified by the county and represent a party or a candidate. Are they identified or anything? They got like a usually... The certification, they'll have a certification on them, but they should not be interacting with voters. That's always illegal. If they have any challenges, they have to talk to the judge of elections. So what about, you know, you're all watching for turnout here. I mean, it's a midterm here. So what can you expect here? It is. I think early voting in the states that have true early voting, New Jersey, Delaware, others, Has been off the charts, right? It's going very well for early voting. Thank you. Increased ballots requested for mail-in voting in Pennsylvania. So that's our form of early voting. If those get all turned in today by 8 p.m. But we're expecting to see strong turnout. I don't know if it'll be record-breaking. The competitive races aren't necessarily where the most people live in Pennsylvania. So we'll see what turnout looks like at the end of the day. And when it comes to those ballots, you said you have to make sure you turn them in. And because I know sometimes it's like... By this time, or what is the rules with that? So in Pennsylvania, postmarks don't matter. So you have to have that mail-in ballot in a dropbox or in a county election official's hands by 8 p.m. tonight. New Jersey allows postmarks, so they have until November 9th to arrive, but they have to be postmarked today. And so many people vote by mail or, you know, what have you. They're starting to count those now, right? As the polls are open, they're starting to be counted, but they won't be reported until... After the fact. In Pennsylvania, they can't even touch the ballots until 7 a.m. today. So they just started opening those ballots and processing them through the machines, scanning them, all of that good stuff. And then they'll tabulate them when polls close. So for Pennsylvania, we know, of course, the governor's race. You have Shapiro and you also have a Stacey Garrity who are going. But we also have some ballot questions. And I know sometimes they can be really wordy. Can you break down so people know when they go in, like, these are what folks were asking for? Yeah, they're always written in legalese Yeah. A little translator. Uh, the both questions in Philadelphia are, uh, basically taking an executive order from the mayor and making it part of our, our charter. Amended to revise contract and procedures, bid preference, a set of, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that question is specifically, uh, related to the fact that there was a, a federal court case that stopped Philadelphia from contracting with. Women, minority-owned businesses, and they have to change the criteria. Because they were given, I wouldn't say preferential, but they were told to heavily favor. Yeah, in the contracting process with the city. So that is now switching to locally owned and small businesses. And it will adjust the rules around the lowest bid contracting, but make that a permanent part of our charter, which is our city's constitution. Why does that have to be worded so... Difficult, legally. Here's another question, too. This one has to do with another amendment to establish and define the functions of Creative Philadelphia. What is this? So this has been created by executive order and has been operating for years, but it's at the discretion of the mayor to have a chief cultural officer operate at a high level in our city, someone advocating for the cultural economy and the creative economy here in in Philadelphia. So this would make that permanent. Um, and so that no mayor could get rid of that office and it establishes rules around the size of the office and things like that. Okay. Really quick though, the ballot one, if people are confused though, I mean, this is, it has been a discussion because of, um, a lot of the policies and rolling back DEI initiatives. Does this fall under that when they're moving the different, um, I guess the preferential treatment for contractors? Yeah, this is basically the city's workaround to manage the fallout from that ruling. And you can bring literature with you into the voting booth. Oh, absolutely, yeah. We encourage people to fill out their ballot at ballot.70.org. They can save their picks and bring it into the booth with them. All right. So we know New Jersey, we've got Cory Booker, we've got Murphy, and then Delaware, we have Sarah McBride and Joseph Arminio. So we have some other races also in our other states. So make sure you go out and vote. A lot of house races here in PA as well. All right, busy day for you, Lauren Christella, CEO of Committee of 70. Thank you very much. Try to get out and vote. It's a beautiful day, and we'll be right back after this.