City of Philadelphia: Ward 5, Division 5
(Polling Place: Pennsylvania Hospital, 8th St. between Spruce and Pine)

Philadelphia is divided into 69 "Wards" and each ward is divided into "Divisions", with roughly 1000 people per division. These wards/divisions are political entities: everyone in a division votes in the same place, and each division elects its own representatives (called "committeepeople") to the Democratic and Republican parties. We are the Democratic committeepeople for the 5th Division in the 5th Ward, a 7-block neighborhood in the Center City part of Philadelphia (see map at right). We created this Web page as both a general resource for those who live in the division, and as a way to disseminate information about upcoming elections.

Andrea Missias and Rob Manning
Democratic committeepeople, Ward 5 Division 5
Contact Us

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Current News/Upcoming Elections

Part of our job as committeepeople is to send out endorsements before each election. If you've lived in Philadelphia, you've probably gotten such a mailing: a grid of "who to vote for" and perhaps a brief letter explaining why.

We believe that voters should have more information about issues and elections that a simple list. We hope that this Web page will be a way to provide this information. Of course we'll have opinions, and maybe even a suggested list of whom to vote for, but we will also try to provide reasons, background, and links to more information.

 

November 2008 Presidential election

We've made a separate November 2008 election page where we list all the candidates, questions, and our recommendations and explanations.

 

April 2008 Results

It was another great election day. We had just over 500 voters (counting absentees). By official tally, that's 50%, fairly respectable, but when you consider that the only contested races were Democratic, that's 500 out of about 700, more like 70% turnout. We feel honored to live in a division that turns out to vote with such enthusiasm, independence, and careful thought. Here are the results from our division in the contested races. Note that we played a significant role in the tightest race in the city (the 1st District state Senate race, in which Farnese seems to have beaten Dougherty by something like 4000 votes):

President: Obama (245), Clinton (219)

1st District State Senate: Farnese (245), Dicker (119), Dougherty (59)

182nd District State House: Josephs (198), Banaszek (149), Gormley (29)

State Treasurer: McCord (226), Cordisco (64), Mann (44), Morrisson Wesley (3)

Interesting tidbit: The last place finisher among 12 candidates for delegate to the national convention was John Street, by a pretty wide margin. I guess it's fair to say that our former mayor is not very popular in our neighborhood.

Interesting tidbit #2: Ron Paul almost beat John McCain in our division, losing 10 votes to 8.