to Philadelphia<\/a>.<\/p>\nCommissioner Lisa Deeley proposed the motion, which passed 2-0, in hopes of reassuring voters that they will not be intimidated. The passage was met with cheers and applause from onlookers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hearing it all over the city, how on edge the voters are,\u201d Deeley said. \u201cMy phone is blowing up with panicked community leaders. If we permit Trump\u2019s people into our polling places, the voters of this city will never forgive us, and they should not.\u201d<\/p>\n
State law prohibits anyone but election officials and voters casting their ballots to get closer than ten feet away from a polling place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey may be out there by the committee people,\u201d Deeley said. \u201cThey may ask voters about their experience voting but I want to make it clear: any voter intimidation will not be tolerated.\u201d<\/p>\n
The third commissioner, Republican Seth Bluestein, abstained from voting. He called the motion premature and likely unnecessary, given that the Department of Justice has not requested access to any restricted area.<\/p>\n
Commission chair Omar Sabir disagreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people may say this is overdoing it or we\u2019re turning up the temperature,\u201d said Sabir. I say the temperature has already been turned up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sabir cited the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to undermine elections nationwide in 2020, including in Philadelphia, as evidence that the commission needed to be prepared for similar efforts in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cPhiladelphia is the birthplace of democracy, and I\u2019ll be damned if democracy dies on my watch,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Philadelphia city commissioners voted Wednesday to deny election monitors the authority to enter restricted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[902,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-316337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-elections","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}