That November day, 77 percent of eligible Philadelphians made a choice. That was the scheme laid out Thursday, showcased in part by two ex-rivals - former Mayor John F. Street and three-time Republican mayoral candidate Sam Katz, whom Democrat Street twice defeated. Promoters said the contest is modeled on one this year in a Los Angeles school-board election by the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a national group that encourages Latino voter participation. The Citizen says the lottery is legal, it is not endorsing anyone, and the money is provided by the Pamela and Ajay Raju Foundation. Philadelphia suffers from chronic civic participation malaise. The two men joined Larry Platt, former editor of Philadelphia Magazine and the Philadelphia Daily News, as he announced the plan to give $10,000 to one lucky voter on Election Day. Is it legal to award cash for voting in Philadelphia? And no: We are not endorsing anyone, or making any money off of this ourselves. We’re doing this for one reason alone: To bring more people to the polls, in any way that gets them there. We’ll even make it easier for you make a decision: Now that you know what’s at stake, make sure you take 10 minutes and familiarize yourself with all the candidates in the race. A similar program, in a small Los Angeles school district election in May , saw remarkable results: Voter turnout increased from 46 percent to 80 percent among those who knew about the possibility of winning $25,000 through Votería. The story announcing the prize kind of admits the pay-for-voting is “icky,” and it is, but when you consider that only 27 percent of registered voters turned out for the mayoral primary in May, things are dire. Maybe it would be just the spark they need to come back again and again. "Desperate times require desperate measures, and this is certainly the case," Katz said at a LOVE Park event announcing what promoters billed as a lottery. "It's a bad idea," Zack Stalberg said in an interview from New Mexico, to which he retired last year. Probably yes, but I will vote because I always vote, not because of the cash inducement (but I’ll keep it if I win it). "I do agree that we have to be trying things," he said.
– A nonprofit group is throwing in $10,000 to sweeten the deal for potential voters in Philadelphia for whom the joy of taking part in democracy might not be enough. Voter turnout in the city has been declining for a long time and sank to just 27% in a mayoral primary this May, according to the Philadelphia Citizen, which is offering the prize in its "2015 Philadelphia Municipal Election Voting Lottery." The group says it will randomly select one of Philadelphia's 1,686 voting divisions when the city votes in local elections on Nov. 3, and will hand a $10,000 check to the first voter who emerges at a selected time, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The Citizen says the funds will come from the Pamela and Ajay Raju Foundation civic group—and the giveaway is completely legal. On its website, the Citizen, which was co-founded by former Philadelphia Daily News editor Larry Platt, admits that the plan is "sorta icky"—and that a similar giveaway in a Los Angeles school district was condemned as a "superficial pseudo-solution" to civic malaise—but says "desperate times call for desperate measures," and the lottery isn't the only scheme underway to try to boost voter turnout. "It's kind of a cockamamie scheme," Platt tells the Daily News. "I want to give away money to see if we can get people to vote." (Low turnout isn't just a Philadelphia problem: The "abysmally low" turnout nationwide last year was the worst since World War II.)