Mike Nutter is Spartacus! Or, Shelley Smith is... Oh forget it.

Anyway, this is pretty cool:

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.

.....

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."

So, uh, that will work.

As I said, behind the scenes, my sense was that the Law Department was on our side- and that the City Solicitor helped this all happen by granting my appeal. There is also a City Councilperson or two who have been working on or behalf, as well. All of that stuff will come out later.

But...

The reason why this looks like it will be successful is that 1)this was such a basic issue, and... 2) that 375 people forced the hands of the City. When we sent out the request for people to send faxes, I figured 40 to 50 responses would be enough to make a difference. We passed 50 people within about 40 minutes. And so, you gave them no choice.

Cool.