Spend more money.

Specifically, "street money," the age-old payment for campaign workers whose job it is to make sure that people who are registered to vote actually do so. And not just any people, but those who support the "right" candidate.

Street money is a largely Democratic Party tradition around the country, and one that has proved especially durable in Philadelphia.

Tomorrow, more than $500,000 in street money - $250,000 from the Democratic City Committee and more from Democrat John F. Street's mayoral campaign and candidates for other offices - will flow into the city's 69 wards.

It is intended to pay Election Day workers $50 or $75 each, or provide them other rewards for their labor - sandwiches, gas money, T-shirts. The workers identify registered voters who haven't voted, go knock on their doors, and try to persuade them to vote - and, if necessary, drive them to polling places.

The money will also put a few bucks in the pockets of volunteers who spend the day outside the polls, handing out sample ballots or "palm cards" indicating the party's endorsed choices.

Few politicians are willing to talk publicly about the system of spreading around cash on Election Day. Gerry Kosinski, a former state legislator who is the Democratic leader of the 45th Ward in the Northeast, said, "It's all perfectly legal."

Though it is legal, the practice is hardly perfect.

Problems have cropped up in many places where street money is used: Public reporting of expenditures is spotty, at best; campaign-expense reports often list simply lump sums and the notation "election day expenses."

Some critics say the cash allotments amount to little more than buying votes. Some Democratic committee people, the party's foot soldiers in neighborhoods, have been known to keep the cash for themselves rather than pass it on to Election Day workers.

"The small amounts of money are perfectly legitimate, but on the whole, street money has a well-deserved smell of the rankest order," said Larry J. Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia. His 1996 book, Dirty Little Secrets, about corruption in U.S. politics, contains a chapter on street money.

In other cities and states, there have been cases - suspected and proved - in which street money was used for bad purposes: to pay off public figures, often ministers for their pulpit endorsements. In the 1993 New Jersey governor's race, Gov. Whitman's chief consultant said he had paid African American ministers to suppress the black vote - a statement he later retracted.

The Los Angeles Times found that in that city's 1989 mayoral election, incumbent Tom Bradley spent $200,000 to boost the black vote, with recruiters going to housing projects, senior citizen centers, even drug treatment centers, looking for voters and offering money if they went to the polls.

Federal law bans vote-buying, but it allows paying of poll workers to get out the vote.

Sabato and co-author Glenn R. Simpson did not study the use of street money in Philadelphia but said their investigation in other cities found "evidence of small payments in exchange for the votes of average citizens in minority areas."

Philadelphia politicians say street money is not used to buy votes or endorsements but to pay for sample ballots and buttons and to reward Election Day workers.

Kosinski plans to reward his workers by taking a crowd of them to Tresa's Buffet, a new Polish American restaurant in his Bridesburg-Harrowgate-Port Richmond ward, after the polls close tomorrow.

"That costs money," he says, estimating that the tab will run as much as $800. "You have to feed the troops."

Street money is the lubricant that keeps the city's Democratic machine humming smoothly.

On Friday morning, city Democratic boss Bob Brady summoned his 69 ward leaders to the party's Center City headquarters for their last-minute Election Day instructions and to write them checks to be cashed and used as street money. Attendance was good.

Brady said he planned to hand out $150 for each of the city's 1,681 voting divisions, or more than $250,000. That comes to about $3,700 per ward leader. (Kosinski said he got $3,750.)

"I never save money," Brady said. "I pay them the Friday before the Tuesday election, and I'm broke by Friday night. I don't want to have money in the bank and lose an election."

He said Democrats throughout the day tomorrow will have "checkers" going over lists of registered Democrats - particularly those they expect to vote for the party's candidates - to keep track of who has voted and who hasn't.

The "checkers" do this by comparing lists of registered voters with the lists, kept by election officials at each polling place, of people who have entered the booths and cast their ballots.

Other workers - called "flushers" and "haulers" in some cities - will knock on the doors of those who haven't voted and try to get them out to the polls.

In Philadelphia, the Democratic City Committee's street money is just the beginning. More will come from candidates' campaign committees, particularly Street's.

Street's campaign spokesman, Ken Snyder, declined to say how much the campaign would spend. "That's a strategic issue, and we're not discussing it in the media."

Bob Barnett, campaign director for Republican Sam Katz, said Republicans might pay some poll workers but "nowhere near" what Democrats do. Katz's supporters, and Republicans in general, are seen as more likely to vote without any prompting from campaign workers.

Barnett questioned the effectiveness of street money in a race as high-profile as the mayoral election. It is considered most effective, and often most prevalent, in primaries in which Democrats must choose from a list of same-party candidates whom they know little about.

Take the case of Joyce Mozenter, a judicial candidate who lost city races in 1991 and 1995 but won in 1997 despite not having the party endorsement - after shelling out $51,000 in "Election Day expenses," much of it distributed 11 days before the election to ward leaders.

Brady says he thinks that street money will make a big difference tomorrow, that it could add "more than a few percent" to Street's vote total.

Not everyone agrees. One prominent city Democrat, who asked not to be named, said there is a "lot of waste" when it comes to street money. Often, he said, it isn't distributed at all to the soldiers on the front line.

Sabato said that while much of the street money, particularly the smaller sums, is legitimate payment to election workers, the system bears a taint.

"There is something disconcerting about seeing politicians or campaign managers walking the streets with big wads of $20 or $100 bills," said Sabato.

"It does send up a signal flare. It may be perfectly legitimate, but it doesn't look good."

Some states have tried to curb the use of street money. Arkansas bars cash payments of more than $50 by a campaign. South Carolina and Louisiana have sought to ban or limit street money.

Yet it remains prevalent in many Southern states and in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Newark and Baltimore.

The idea of rewarding workers and supporters has been around for a long time.

In 1758, Sabato said, George Washington provided 160 gallons of rum, beer and cider for 391 voters and their friends. In 1983, Chicago mayoral candidate Jane Byrne gave hams to needy voters.

After the polls close tomorrow night in Philadelphia, some of the folks who helped turn out the vote in the 45th Ward will be ordering a late dinner at Tresa's.