Pennsylvania Convention Center

They will each create a scenic setting that reflects the distinctive horticultural vision.

The show will be at the Pennsylvania Convention Center from March 13th through the 21st.

Health Check at 11:00 tonight.

[upbeat music] When it comes to weight loss, people may not need to trade in the diet sodas for water.

So that's where it resides today.

By 1993, the now Pennsylvania Convention Center-

Ah

... was now open, and the original Philadelphia Civic Center slowly lost events, and by 2005, it was demolished.

[laughs] No pressure, but Al Schmidt is used to it.

Back in 2020, he was the lone Republican on the board that oversaw Philadelphia's elections and spent days huddled inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center overseeing the counting of ballots, all while demonstrators brandishing Stop the Steal signs protested outside.

President Trump singled him out, and death threats followed.

Testifying before the January 6th committee, he pushed back against conspiracy theories and defended the city's process

We'll also get into the business case for volunteerism and what to do if you're an HR team of one.

We'll also get to preview the 2026 Pennsylvania Conference for Women, which will be held on November 5th at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Philly SHRM is a proud community partner of the conference, where more than 9,000 women will experience an extraordinary day of fresh perspectives, practical ideas, meaningful connections, and lasting momentum.

Let's listen.

At that same time, the Pennsylvania legislature passed Act 77, which allowed for no excuse to vote by mail ballots, which was also a new thing for Pennsylvania.

So all of those things combined with the pandemic and the political environment in 2020 led to what everyone saw at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where we were counting ballots for the entire week and the whole country was waiting on, you know, the determination on who won the presidential race.

Uh, so that background is really important because it has informed a lot of what we've done over the last five years in preparing for this past presidential in 2024, and preparing for the upcoming midterm.

So right now, things are pretty steady, and, you know, it's a steady state.

So if we received, in a presidential election, 400,000 mail ballots and they're inside secrecy envelopes, and those secrecy envelopes are inside the outer mail envelopes, we can't even start touching them until 7:00 AM on election day, which means we then have to handle 1.2 million pieces of paper, like the ballot and two envelopes, all throughout that day, and we are now required to have a 24/7 operation, which we did during the presidential election anyway, but we can't stop going through those ballots until we've gotten through all 400,000 ballots.

So that type of fix is really important for Philadelphia and counties of our size, and some of the smaller counties may not need it, but I think the legislature isn't really looking at the broader picture of they want results faster, and obviously we need to maintain the accuracy of the count, but then they're not giving us the tools to do that in a presidential year the right way.

In 2020, when I was the deputy commissioner at the Pennsylvania Convention Center counting the mail ballots, and I'm not exaggerating here, when I woke up Tuesday morning for election day, I didn't go back to sleep until Friday, and the presidential race wasn't called until Saturday morning.

So, like, we had shifts of temporary workers where we had hundreds of temporary workers every eight hours cycling through at the convention center from Tuesday through Friday, and I was there the entire time in a suit, standing there in the same spot, not sleeping.

Toyota, let's go places.

Tonight, the Philadelphia Tribune hosted its Most Influential African American awards ceremony at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

The publication is the longest continuously running Black newspaper in the United States.

6ABC Vice President of Community Engagement, Nikki Hawkins, was named one of the city's most influential leaders.

Well, more than 1000 area kids now have a warm coat for the upcoming winter.

Thanks to some car dealers driving away the cold return to the Pennsylvania Convention Center today.

The Auto Dealers Caring for Kids Foundation handed out just some of the more than 25,000 new coats collected for this year's drive.

More giveaways are planned throughout the season.