It’s Primary Voting Day!

Voters, take note – today is primary voting day for Philadelphia.

Today’s the day, Philadelphia!

There are six Democratic candidates running for the lone spot on the ballot. It has been a relatively short race – the alleged frontrunner, Jim Kenney, didn’t even throw his hat into the ring until February! There is also state senator Anthony Williams, former Philadelphia DA Lynne Abraham, former city solicitor Nelson Diaz, former city spokesman Doug Oliver, and former Pennsylvania state senator Milton Street. The six have faced off at dozens of candidate forums staged by a wide range of groups throughout the city.

There are also four charter questions on the ballot. The first has to do with whether the Home Rule Charter should be changed to include a Commission for Women, a proposed 27-member panel that would be appointed by the mayor and the City Council. The second would create a Commission for Universal Pre-Kindergarten (referring to the proposed measure that would fund a year of pre-K for all four-year-olds in the city) of 17 appointed members. A third change to the Home Rule Charter would “require that all city agencies and departments create language access plans, so that lack of knowledge of English is not an impediment to obtaining city services.” Lastly, voters are asked to decide on a (non-binding) referendum that would have the state legislature and governor cede control of the school district back to the city. The final measure has been criticized by citizen watchdog groups as nothing but a glorified opinion poll, due to its non-binding status.

It’s expected that there will not be a fantastic turnout for the primary election, as this is the trend for preliminary races.