During an emergency meeting Tuesday, Philadelphia City Commissioners voted 2-1 to reinstate the time-consuming and labor-intensive process of poll book reconciliation, reversing a decision made less than a week ago to waive the onerous procedure.

In poll book reconciliation, poll books are amended to indicate whether a voter has voted twice. While every county carries out some type of poll book reconciliation, Philadelphia is unique in extending the process to mail-in ballots. To accommodate this, Philadelphia election officials pause the count to scan poll books to allow staffers to remove any double votes. City officials argue this necessary pause violates a provision of a recent election funding bill passed by the state legislature. Philadelphia’s reconciliation process did not find any double votes in the last three elections. However, poll book reconciliation did find forty of these double votes in the 2020 general election.

On Monday, Common Court Pleas Judge Anne Marie Coyle ruled the city could move forward without the process. Despite ruling in favor of the city, Judge Coyle criticized the City Commissioners office. Judge Coyle told the city the decision to waive the process undermined faith in the election results. While critical of the city’s decision in general, Judge Coyle decided against a forced reinstatement of poll book reconciliation. She believed that doing so would be too disruptive of the voting process. Republicans appealed the decision to the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

City officials originally planned to have nearly all votes counted by Wednesday morning. Instead, ballots left uncounted Tuesday night will be counted and reported out through the rest of the week. Republican commissioner Seth Bluestein voted for poll book reconciliation, but critiqued Republicans in the state legislature for targeting Philadelphia to “force us to conduct a procedure no other county does.” The delay in counting ballots potentially leaves the question of who won to the uncounted ballots from Pennsylvania’s largest city.