Majority of Philadelphians forced to vote provisional ballots should have gotten regular ballots

This year, much of the concern about provisional ballots focused on Ohio, where Secretary of State Jon Husted was engaged in all sorts of crookedness. But Philadelphia had its serious problems, too, providing a strong example of how broken this system is even without a Jon Husted. Now, the city commission has found that a majority of people who were forced to cast provisional ballots in Philadelphia should have been able to vote on regular ballots:

Of the 27,355 provisional ballots cast, 14,407 were from voters listed properly in poll books or supplemental sheets, and 5,263 were from people who properly registered but weren't included in polling material.

One of the primary reasons for the errors, according to the report, was that the status of voters who were not 18 when they registered was not updated before polling material was printed.

Another issue stemmed from a problem extracting voter data from the state database, leaving some voters excluded from the books.

We have huge problems with voter suppression that badly need to be addressed. But beyond that, we just have an unreliable, 19th-century voter registration system. Democracy demands that America's voting process be fixed.