Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania: The invisible volunteers who help keep democracy running | Daniel Pearson/The Philadelphia Inquirer

They’ve been called the “most important people in running an election” by Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, yet even as interest in election security has skyrocketed after Donald Trump’s persistent false claims of voter fraud, their jobs seem to be hidden in plain sight. Unlike the grifters and sycophants who help feed the president’s Big Lie and earn millions of social media followers, make frequent TV appearances, and are showered with adulation by the White House, the roughly 45,000 volunteers across Pennsylvania who are essential to ensuring elections happen fairly, smoothly, and efficiently are rarely recognized for the work they do. No wonder poll workers are in short supply — in the commonwealth and across the nation. A Brookings Institution report said that about half of all election officials found it either very or somewhat difficult to find enough workers. Read Article

Pennsylvania Secretary of State tells Trump admin: Show us your proof of noncitizen voting here | Michelle Baruchman/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Pennsylvania’s top election official contended in a letter to a cabinet secretary this week that the Trump administration’s own staff does not have “high confidence” in its claims of thousands of noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls. In a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of State Al Schmidt said the Department of Homeland Security has still not fulfilled a promise to provide a written copy of its methodology “with a list of specific data sources” for its calculation that there are more than 14,500 noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls — a claim Schmidt and other Pennsylvania officials dispute. “We await this information,” Schmidt said in the letter, citing a virtual Aug. 13 meeting with DHS staff. Schmidt, a Republican appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, told Mullin that during that meeting “DHS representatives explained that they did not have high confidence that the 14,576 individuals... were, in fact, non-citizens who had improperly registered to vote in Pennsylvania.” Read Article

Pennsylvania asks Trump administration how exactly it identified potential noncitizen voters | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania state officials are pushing back on the Trump administration’s claim that there may be more than 14,000 potential noncitizens registered to vote in the state. In a letter sent Wednesday to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said the federal government has not disclosed the methodology or data source it used to identify the noncitizens. Schmidt also pointed out gaps in a program that the Department of Homeland Security uses to identify noncitizens. “As you know, past analyses of voter lists have relied on faulty methodologies that can lead to inaccurate results and false claims about the citizenship status of eligible voters,” Schmidt wrote. “In fact, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official who oversees [the program] has ‘acknowledged that the system can’t always find the most current citizenship information for people not born in the U.S.’” Pennsylvania responds to Trump administration claim about noncitizen voters - Votebeat

Pennsylvania says it will not hand over voter rolls to federal government in reply to DOJ letter | Andrea Padilla/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt stressed that the state was not in violation of any voting regulations in a response letter to a Department of Justice inquiry that threatened criminal charges over suspicions of noncitizen voting. The letter, sent Monday, pushed back against the Trump administration’s insistence that allowing federal assistance in inspecting voter rolls was the best way to avoid criminal prosecution for “aiding and abetting the violation” of federal voting laws. The Trump administration’s letter, sent July 7, was addressed to voting officials in all 50 states and requested a reply within the week. Schmidt’s reply made it clear that Pennsylvania would not hand over voter rolls to the federal government and reiterated that voting regulations were followed meticulously. Read Article

Pennsylvania officials want to bar feds from polling places for midterms | Matthew Rink/USA Today

Trump's rhetoric and executive orders over unfounded allegations of widespread election fraud, coupled with his expansion of ICE to carry out mass deportation of immigrants, has alarmed Democrats and other critics that the president might use federal agents to suppress voter turnout in places with high concentrations of Democrats during the midterm elections. State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Philadelphia-area Democrat, in February announced he would introduce legislation that specifically bans these federal agents from entering polling places. Pennsylvania already prohibits on-duty law enforcement officers from being within 100 feet on a polling place unless they are responding to a specific incident. However, Kenyatta told the USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania that law says nothing about federal agents. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Bipartisan election board languishing as governor fails to appoint new members | Carter Walker/Votebeat

In 2020, Pennsylvania’s elections were facing a major crisis. The presidential primary was set for April 28, but the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing, restricting travel and complicating in-person activities — such as voting. So the state legislature came up with a solution. In a unanimous vote in both chambers, the primary was moved to June and, simultaneously, the state created a new bipartisan body meant to review and recommend changes to Pennsylvania’s near-century-old election law. The Election Law Advisory Board, as it is called, was heralded at the time as a way to thoughtfully reform the state’s elections. But six years later, the board has fallen into a state of disuse, in part because Gov. Josh Shapiro has so far failed to fill seven seats he’s responsible for. The board has not met in nearly three years, even as county election officials are still clamoring for changes to the state’s outdated, contradictory election code. Josh Shapiro has left 7 vacancies on Pennsylvania’s Election Law Advisory Board - Votebeat

Pennsylvania: New study finds that ballot curing helps more mail ballots get counted | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

Mail voters who are informed and have opportunities to fix ballot errors ahead of elections are much more likely to have their votes counted, a new study of the 2024 election in Pennsylvania has found. The study, from the University of Pennsylvania, provides hard evidence to back up the arguments that county officials have used for years to justify such “notice and cure” policies for defective mail ballots. “Vote curing policies help balance the tension between promoting both access and integrity in mail balloting,” the study’s authors wrote. “In short, vote curing can reduce the number of eligible voters whose deficient mail ballots become ‘lost votes.’” Read Article

Pennsylvania won’t test internet-connected electronic pollbooks in 2026 primary | Carter Walker/Votebeat

The Pennsylvania Department of State is postponing a pilot program to connect electronic pollbooks — the devices election workers use to check voters in at the polls — to the internet. Counties were slated to test the function in the May 19 primary, but the department said last week that unresolved technical questions and low interest from counties led them to delay the pilot until at least next year. Only Philadelphia, Lebanon, and Delaware counties had signed up for the pilot, the department confirmed. “While the anticipated pilots are being postponed, the feedback and collaborative discussions have helped identify key technical and operational considerations that will support more informed decision-making in the future as DOS plans a more comprehensive feasibility review of full connectivity after the 2026 General Election,” said Ellen Lyon, a spokesperson for the department. Read Article

Pennsylvania court grants public access to voting data in dispute from 2020 election’s aftermath | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

Pennsylvania’s high court ruled Tuesday that spreadsheets of raw data associated with every ballot are public records, providing access to the “cast vote records” that had been requested by an election researcher hired by the Trump Administration last year. The Democratic-majority Supreme Court said its unanimous decision was a way to “satisfy the voting public that our elections are safe, secure and accurate” while preserving the state constitution’s requirement that votes remain secret. The Lycoming County elections director in Williamsport had denied Heather Honey’s request for digital copies from the 2020 presidential election, saying that would amount to letting her review the contents of a ballot box, one vote at a time. Cast vote records are created when a voter’s choices are made electronically or scanned. Read Article

Pennsylvania Supreme Court case challenges state rule for registering voters | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

Should voter registration applications be rejected if voters’ personal information doesn’t match government databases? The Pennsylvania Department of State said in 2018 that the answer should be no. But in a case currently pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Potter County Commissioner Robert Rossman is arguing the department is misinterpreting the law. If Rossman’s challenge is successful, it could result in more voter applications being rejected. In 2018, the Department of State issued a directive stating that, based on state and federal law, counties can’t reject voter applications solely because the driver’s license number or last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number don’t match state or federal databases, as could happen if the voter makes a mistake when filling out the application. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Automatic voter registration has enrolled more than 350,000 voters, but they don’t always vote | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Two and a half years into Pennsylvania’s new program to register more voters, rural counties have seen some of the biggest gains, a Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis has found. In September 2023, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced that Pennsylvania would join the more than 20 other states that offer automatic voter registration. Under Pennsylvania’s version of AVR, eligible but unregistered voters who get a new driver’s license or ID card at PennDOT facilities are automatically led through the process to join the voter rolls unless they opt out. Previously, these prospective voters had to opt in to register at PennDOT facilities. State data suggests that the program has achieved its goal of registering more voters, including some who may not have registered otherwise. However, Votebeat and Spotlight PA’s analysis found that these new voters are less likely to actually vote than their counterparts who registered by other means. Experts who have studied AVR programs say that result is not uncommon. Read Article

Pennsylvania special elections come with high financial and logistical costs | Carter Walker/Votebeat

If it feels like Pennsylvania voters are constantly going to the polls, it’s not your imagination. According to data from Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan online political encyclopedia, Pennsylvania has held 47 special elections for vacant state legislative and congressional seats since 2017, including two being held Tuesday for state House seats in Allegheny and Lehigh counties. That’s more than in any other state over that period. It’s not clear why Pennsylvania has had so many special elections, though observers have pointed to the state’s large full-time legislature as a possible factor. But what’s more clear is the cost. Many of those special elections were held on different days from normal primary or general elections, increasing the burden for administrators and costing taxpayers millions of extra dollars. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Paper ballots OK’d for Westmoreland County  voters at $18K price tag | Rich Cholodofsky/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Westmoreland County voters will again be able to cast paper ballots at the polls during this year’s primary and general elections. Republican commissioners Sean Kertes and Doug Chew on Thursday approved a contract with an estimated price tag of $18,275 to supply paper ballots at each of the county’s 306 voting precincts for the May 19 primary. Voters will continue to have an option to use the touch-screen voting machines at the polls. Commissioners authorized the paper ballot option for the first time during the last year’s general election, calling it a test run for a future where digital ballot marking devices, such as what has been used in Westmoreland County since 2020, will no longer be part of the Election Day process. Read Article

Pennsylvania will pilot internet-connected pollbooks in May primary | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

The Pennsylvania Department of State is launching a pilot program to try out the use of internet-connected electronic pollbooks, and the devices would be deployed as early as the May primary election.More than half of Pennsylvania counties are already using or have tested out electronic pollbooks, or e-pollbooks. But the state doesn’t currently allow those systems to be connected to the internet, limiting their utility, proponents say, and some county election officials have been petitioning the state to change that.Proponents point out that internet-connected pollbooks could reduce administrative burdens and allow counties to check results more quickly. But some county officials are concerned that connecting them to the internet could compromise election security. Amy Gulli, a spokesperson for the Department of State, said that on Jan. 28, the department informed e-pollbook vendors about how to apply to participate in the pilot program, which is still in the early stages, and “will assess whether internet-connected EPBs allow county election officials to respond to polling place issues faster and more efficiently.” Read Article

Pennsylvania: Tempers flare in Chester County as investigators detail causes of pollbook error | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Roughly 100 voters and election workers filled the tiered seating of the wood-paneled courtroom on the top floor of Chester County’s Judicial Center Tuesday night to hear how the county had misprinted its pollbooks last November, and to express their frustration at county officials for the debacle. Two lawyers from West Chester-based law firm Fleck Eckert Klein McGarry LLC, which the county had hired to investigate the episode, sat at the prosecutor’s table and delivered their findings to the general public seated on their left and the county commissioners on their right. On Nov. 4, 2025, pollbooks used to check voters in at polling places didn’t include the names of Chester County’s more than 75,000 unaffiliated and third-party voters. Those voters had to either wait for supplemental pollbooks to be delivered or use a provisional ballot, an option used when there is some question about a voter’s eligibility. The error forced about 12,600 voters in the county to cast provisional ballots, or roughly 6.4% of the county electorate — more than in any other recent election. Almost all of those ballots were eventually counted. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Chester County poll book problems on Election Day were due to human error, insufficient oversight, report finds | by Katie Bernard

Independent and unaffiliated voters were left off Chester County’s poll books in November’s election due to human error exacerbated by insufficient training, poor oversight and staffing challenges in the county office, an independent firm has concluded. In November, more than 12,000 Chester County voters were forced to vote by provisional ballot after the county included just registered Democrats and Republicans in the poll books for the general election. Every voter who wanted to was able to cast a ballot, county officials said, but it resulted in a chaotic scene and the county had to issue an unusually high number of provisional ballots — which require more steps to cast and count. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Trump pardon doesn’t apply to alleged 2020 double voter, judge rules | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Matthew Laiss, a man accused of double voting in the 2020 election, is not covered by a pardon President Donald Trump issued to allies who attempted to overturn his 2020 election loss, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. “This Court finds that Laiss has not yet applied to the Office of the Pardon Attorney, or received a certificate of pardon, which the plain language of the Pardon requires him to do,” U.S. District Judge Joseph Leeson Jr. wrote. Federal prosecutors charged Laiss in September with voting twice in the November 2020 election, alleging that he moved from Pennsylvania to Florida in August of that year and voted both in person in Florida and via mail ballot in Bucks County. Both votes were allegedly for Trump. Read Article

Pennsylvania disputes claim that it’s in talks to share voter rolls with Ohio | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania officials say they’re not in discussions to hand over private voter information to Ohio, where officials are trying to identify voters who are double-registered following the state’s departure from a bipartisan voter data sharing program. In December, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, announced a “multi-state election integrity network” called EleXa that will share its voter rolls with 10 other states to “identify people who try to vote illegally, often by having more than one active voter registration and then casting multiple ballots in the same election.” The press release also said that Pennsylvania was “finalizing an agreement” to join the program. But officials in Pennsylvania say that is not the case. Amy Gulli, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State, said the two state agencies spoke last summer about a possible information-sharing agreement, but the conversation ultimately fizzled out. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Luzerne County struggles to leave behind election troubles after years of staff turnover and errors | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

A Pennsylvania county that has drawn congressional scrutiny for the way it runs elections continued to experience problems in 2025, despite a stabilization in leadership and changes aimed at preventing errors. For Luzerne County, the most populous in northeastern Pennsylvania, the issues this year started in October with a mix-up with mail ballots that resulted in the county mistakenly sending 31 voters two ballots. The county quickly canceled the duplicate ballots and blamed the mishap on a state-run software program. “It's not a specifically Luzerne County issue,” Emily Cook, the county’s election director, told the local NPR affiliate. “It's not something that we did ourselves.” The state, however, said the error was on Luzerne’s end. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Judge to rule on whether Trump pardon applies to 2020 election fraud case | Carter Walker/Votebeat

A judge overseeing a criminal double-voting case in Pennsylvania appeared open to the defendant’s argument that a pardon from President Donald Trump should apply to him. The defendant, Matthew Laiss, is accused of voting for Trump twice in the 2020 election — once in person in Florida and once via mail in Pennsylvania. At a hearing Monday in federal court, he argued that Trump’s Nov. 7 pardon of allies who attempted to overturn his 2020 loss should also apply to his alleged crimes. While Trump did not directly name Laiss in the pardon, his attorneys argued it covers his case because of its broad language. The Department of Justice argues the pardon does not apply to Laiss, a view it says is shared by the U.S. pardon attorney. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Why marbles, playing cards, and ping pong balls decide so many local races | Carter Walker/Votebeat

At the Lancaster County Government Center on Friday, 26 clear-plastic bowls sat in front of blue index cards on a table, each card corresponding to a candidate for Mountville Borough tax collector. Christa Miller, the county’s election director, shook a leather-wrapped bottle filled with red, numbered marbles, and tipped it upside down until one of the marbles fell into her hand. Down the line of bowls she went, adding a marble to each and calling out the number. When she got to the 19th bowl, with Keith Tarvin’s card behind it, she drew the lowest numbered marble, one. And so it was decided: Tarvin, who wasn’t there to witness the process, would be the borough’s next tax collector. The elaborate production was necessary because Tarvin and the other 25 candidates represented by a plastic bowl had all gotten the same number of votes in the Nov. 5 municipal election: a single write-in vote. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Chester County commissioners vote to count challenged provisional ballots after poll book error | Katie Bernard/The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Chester County Board of Elections rejected Republican challenges to provisional ballots Monday as the board prepares to launch an investigation into a poll book error that forced thousands of independent and third-party voters to cast provisional ballots during this month’s election. In a nearly six-hour meeting, the Democratic-led board heard from dozens of voters and poll workers who described the chaos they endured on Nov. 4 during the high-turnout municipal election. The election resulted in more than 12,000 provisional ballots being cast primarily by independent and third-party voters blocked from voting on machines — an unusually high amount. Read Article

Pennsylvania’s Chester County seeks explanation for pollbook error as it checks provisional ballots | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania’s Chester County has reviewed more than two-thirds of the provisional ballots cast on Election Day, and confirmed that it has begun counting eligible ballots, though officials still cannot explain what caused a pollbook error that forced independent and third-party voters to use provisional ballots. County officials said they hope to have the answer by December, after an investigation by an outside firm. Pollbooks are the lists of registered voters that workers use to check in voters at the polling place. But pollbooks that Chester County distributed for Election Day omitted third-party and independent voters, forcing thousands of them to vote using provisional ballots. Provisional ballots require voters and election officials to take some additional steps, such as signing the envelope in the correct spot, or they will be rejected for technical reasons, and the ballots must undergo additional checks before they are counted. Read Article

Pennsylvania: What happened with Chester County’s pollbook printing problem? | Carter Walker/Votebeat

An error that affected the ability of tens of thousands of Chester County voters to cast regular ballots on Election Day happened after county officials mistakenly failed to extract third party and unaffiliated voters from the state’s voter registration management database when creating a pollbook file for printing. State officials say the county only extracted Republican and Democrat voters when the county prepared its pollbooks, leaving out the third party and unaffiliated voters. Pollbooks are lists of registered voters that workers use to check them in at voting locations. “That is something that you sometimes see counties do, correctly, in a primary election,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said, referring to the fact that third party and unaffiliated voters can’t participate in Pennsylvania primaries. “It appears that Chester did that pollbook extract and only included major party voters.” Read Article

Pennsylvania criminal case highlights problems with third-party voter registration drives | Carter Walker/Votebeat

In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, workers with an Arizona-based consulting firm conducting a voter registration drive tried to submit fake registrations in Pennsylvania in an effort to earn more money, the state attorney general is alleging in a criminal complaint filed this month. The case grew out of investigations in a few counties into voter registration applications that prosecutors had flagged as irregular before the election. But election officials across the commonwealth say the problems with these types of third-party voter registration drives aren’t limited to this incident of alleged fraud. Rather, they say, systemic problems with the way third-party voter registration organizations operate often result in street canvassers submitting incomplete or invalid registrations. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Five years after trying to aid Trump, Fulton County faces steep penalty | Carter Walker/Votebeat

After President Donald Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020, he and his allies were pushing false narratives about the election being stolen, pressuring state and local officials, and calling for audits of the results. In Fulton County, Pennsylvania, a Republican stronghold where Trump won a larger percentage of the vote than anywhere else in the state, local leaders wanted to help. “Sending this email to see what’s going on with this rigged election,” County Commissioner Randy Bunch, a Republican, wrote to state Sen. Judy Ward, also a Republican, in a Nov. 12 email obtained by watchdog group American Oversight. “We can’t let this election get stolen if there is anything I can do please let me know.” A few weeks later, according to court documents, the county let an outside company examine its voting machines and download data from them. In text messages sent shortly afterwards, one county commissioner said that if the county hadn’t given the company access, a Trump ally would have forced it to do so via a subpoena. That decision to allow a third party to access sensitive voting equipment set off far-reaching consequences for Fulton County. As a result of a state order, it had to purchase all-new voting equipment. After years of legal proceedings, the county is facing more than $1 million in fines, an amount equal to roughly one-eighth of the county’s yearly budget. Read Article

Pennsylvania counties erroneously issue dozens of duplicate ballots | Carter Walker/Votebeat

A handful of Pennsylvania counties mistakenly issued duplicate mail ballots to a few of their voters in recent weeks. Why that happened is unclear — state and county officials gave different explanations — but they cautioned that the error would have not resulted in anyone being able to have their vote counted twice. State and county officials said they have found that a total of 68 potential duplicate mail ballots were mistakenly issued. In some of these cases, they said, the ballots may not have reached voters, as the mistake may have been caught after a second ballot label was generated but before a duplicate ballot was actually mailed to the voter. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Luzerne County, state disagree on cause of ballot release error | Michael P. Buffer/The Citizens’ Voice

Luzerne County and the Pennsylvania Department of State offered different assessments of what caused the release of two mail ballots to 31 voters for the Nov. 4 general election. According to a statement from the Department of State, Luzerne County “inadvertently and incorrectly generated duplicate mailing labels.” Luzerne County Director of Elections Emily Cook noted “an apparent error with the state’s SURE system” in a news release on Tuesday that disclosed the inadvertent and “isolated” release of two mail ballots to 31 voters. The Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) system serves as the database for the state’s 67 counties to ensure the accuracy and integrity of voter registration rolls. It allows counties to update voters’ registration information statewide, eliminate verified duplicates and deceased voters from the rolls and transfer records electronically between counties. Read Article

Pennsylvania Supreme Court rule that soters must be told if mail ballot is rejected, | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Voters must be notified if election officials are going to reject their mail ballots because of an error such as an incorrect date or missing signature on the return envelope, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Friday. In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled that Washington County erred in not notifying 2024 presidential primary voters that their mail ballots would be rejected, leaving them unaware their votes would go uncounted. “We must interpret the Election Code and its statutory procedures in a way that ‘favors the fundamental right to vote and enfranchises, rather than disenfranchises, the electorate,’ Justice Kevin Dougherty said, writing for the majority. “Reading the Code as allowing county boards to withhold readily available information from voters does not serve that goal.” V--read Article