Patriot Update

Pennsylvania election officials say they are not planning to investigate the extraordinary turnout and vote totals that President Obama garnered from parts of Philadelphia last Tuesday.

“In a presidential election year, there are times where you get extremely high turnout,” said Ron Ruman, press secretary for Pennsylvania’s Department of State, in a telephone interview with Fox News. “We would investigate if we thought there was something shady going on. But at this point, we have no reason to think that.”

Ruman’s comments came as Philadelphia news outlets and election analysts have flagged the near-unanimity with which the Obama-Biden ticket swept pockets of the City of Brotherly Love. As the Philadelphia Inquirer first reported last week, six of Philadelphia’s 66 wards handed the president victory shares of 99 percent or better. In 20 of the wards, the Obama vote totals exceeded 97 percent.

On Monday, the Inquirer reported that in 59 of Philadelphia’s “divisions” — these are subsets of wards, wherein fewer than 1,000 people might be registered to vote — GOP nominee Mitt Romney failed to win even a single vote. Collectively, the votes for Obama across these divisions added up to 19,605, to Romney’s zero.