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I'm Sparta... I am Ed Goppelt!
Submitted by Dan U-A on Sun, 07/27/2008 - 12:47pm.
I'm Ed Goppelt!
You are Ed Goppelt. And so are you. And you. And you, too.
What am I talking about? Well, we heard from the Solicitor’s Office on Friday about the election returns issue. Specifically, they sent a letter to Ed- creator of Hallwatch and owner of the faxbank we all used. The letter said that because all the requests came from one fax machine, the Law Department was treating them as one request…
The City received at least 250 identical requests, all of which originated from your fax machine, and as such, we are treating them as one request for the purposes of our response to you.
Upon first read, I was pretty disappointed about that. Except after thinking about it for a few minutes (and especially the part that says... "for the purposes of responding..."), the rest of the letter makes clear that they are still dealing with the main problem:
…in light of the myriad of technological and security issues your request raises, the Law Department must review the request under the Pennsylvania Right to Know Act…
In other words, they are dealing with the underlying issue: that more people have requested passwords than the Commissioners' system appears ready to deal with, and so they need thirty days to come up with an answer. That is fair, and as I told them, the goal was not to force a lot of work on the Law Department, but to open election returns to everyone. In other words, I am not too upset about City lawyers not spending their time on mail merges, as long as they are actually considering the real issue.
(And, not to get too much into palace intrigue here, but much of this was made possible by the fact that City Solicitor Shelley Smith granted my appeal, overruling the Commissioners when they said they would not give me a password. Thus far, the Law Department itself has come down on the side of open government. That is a good sign, in general.)
In terms of whether I think we will get a 'win'... As Sean noted, the Philly Election site is in fact down at the moment. I am not sure if that is a coincidence, but I do know that with 350+ individual requests, people in City Hall have started to work behind the scenes to fix this.
I am cautiously optimistic that the next letter Ed (however many Ed’s there really are) gets will say that his request has been made moot, because the data is now freely available to all citizens on the City of Philadelphia website.
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Kudos to Dan for making this
Kudos to Dan for making this happen. I'll be eagerly watching to see what happens next.
If the City Commissioners couldn't manage putting the election returns on the web, I wonder what else is going on over there.
So I note 2 things
1. 30 days is by my count August 25th
and
2. that Joshua Harman's fax is included in that letter which means my and perhaps a few others fax modems may kick into gear on or about August 26th.
It would be awful nice for folks to be able to cross check the results from their local polling place with online official results by the November general election.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
From one fax machine, so they're being treated as one request?
Bogus.
I hear you, and, I am not
I hear you, and, I am not anyone's lawyer here, so how someone responds is their choice. But they aren't really treating it as one request from Ed as much as they are treating this more like a class action where Ed is the named plaintff. They didn't, for example, say they are going to give Ed a password, and none for anyone else.
If there is ever a need to break these out into seperate requests, the City's hand will be forced. But, if the City denies the next request, the next step would probably be a lawsuit anyway, where a judge would consolidate the claims, and this would all be heard together.
More Press
A KYW story is running this morning:
http://www.kyw1060.com/Penn-Student-Wants-Open-Access-to-Election-Night-...
And, there is a small piece in the Inquirer, including this line:
the request
Did people specifically request passwords or did they say that it's cool if the city just posts the results up online? I don't know why they are dragging their feet about that. It's such old news... they could steal a web guy from the Mayor's office and have it done in an hour.
---
This Too Will Pass, for the guts in your cerebrum.
The request is for the data
not the passwords. But to be clear the data being sought is detailed results division by division, not just citywide totals. Detailed information in the public's hands is handy for DIY election analysis which some would argue is the whole point of a limited password system - to discourage participation by discouraging "amateurs" from getting into the local election business.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
I read Mr. Harmon's response
I read Mr. Harmon's response a little differently. If you read his letter, he's treating all the faxes as one request "for the purpose of our response" This is an easy way of not having to send this letter saying we'll have an answer for you in 30 days to all 250 people who sent a fax.
Isn't that basically what I
Isn't that basically what I said? If not, I tried to and failed. (Ie, the comment on the mail merge, etc.)
I was just trying to needle them a little about the one fax machine thing, but yes, they are still dealing with the real issue- that more people sent in requests than the system can handle.
That makes a lot more sense
Snarky comment withdrawn.