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

Pennsylvania: Fight over mail-ballot date requirement approaches the endgame – Carter Walker/Votebeat

When Pennsylvania’s highest court gathered in Philadelphia on Sept. 10 to hear arguments on whether voters must write the date on their mail ballot return envelopes, a lawyer for Republican groups told justices that eliminating the requirement could prompt a flood of election law challenges. It’s probably a little late to worry about that. Election litigation hit unprecedented heights across the country during the 2024 election cycle, according to an expert who tracks it, a sign that courts are increasingly being asked to settle partisan battles over election administration. And Pennsylvania’s mail ballot dating requirement could very well be the most litigated of all. Read Article

Pennsylvania: What to know about the poll worker positions on the 2025 election ballot | Carter Walker/Votebeat

More than 27,000 poll worker positions will be on ballots across Pennsylvania this November, allowing voters to select who will be in charge of their precincts during the 2026 and 2028 election cycles. Only Pennsylvanians are voting for these positions. No other state still elects its poll workers, and these contests are usually riddled with vacancies. That makes elections for poll workers more complicated than most. Read Article

Pennsylvania: A federal appeals court affirmed state can’t throw out misdated mail ballots. What could happen next? | Lindsay Shachnow/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In Pennsylvania, absentee and mail ballots must be received by county elections offices by 8 p.m. on Election Day. So requiring voters to date their ballots didn’t seem to serve much of a purpose, said Justin Levitt, an election law expert and law professor at Loyola Marymount University’s Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “Why are you throwing out something as important as somebody’s vote for something that isn’t important at all?” he said. “It’s like throwing somebody’s ballot out if they use black pen rather than blue pen.” Last week, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. The federal court ordered Pennsylvania to stop throwing out mail ballots that are incorrectly dated by voters, affirming earlier court rulings. But the legal fight is unlikely to end there. Read Article

Pennsylvania nuns who stood up to claims of election fraud win national award | Carter Walker/Votebeat

As the 2024 presidential election approached, tensions were high, and activists were, once again, hunting for fraud. Cliff Maloney, a Republican activist working to get GOP voters to return their mail ballots, said on the social network X that one of his door-to-door canvassers had discovered an address in Erie, Pennsylvania, that had no residents but 53 voters registered to it. “Turns out it’s the Benedictine Sisters of Erie and NO ONE lives there,” he wrote in a post that went viral, adding that he would not let “Dems count illegal votes.” But that wasn’t true. And Maloney found himself being called out by the nuns, who didn’t appreciate being accused of fraud. “We do live at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery and a simple web search would alert him to our active presence in a number of ministries in Erie,” Sister Stephanie Schmidt, of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, said in a statement, calling Maloney’s post “blatantly false.” Read Article

Pennsylvania Congressional Republicans say election powers should remain with states | Jordan Wilkie/WITF

Three Republican members of Congress from Pennsylvania said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s recent statement that he wants to eliminate voting machines and mail-in ballots is theoretically appealing but impractical, as elections are managed by the 50 states, not the president. Asked about Trump’s comments on Tuesday, U.S. Senator Dave McCormick didn’t criticize the president. But he made the point that mobilizing more Republicans to vote by mail last year helped him and Trump both win in Pennsylvania. Two fellow Republicans who were in McCormick’s company, Congressmen Lloyd Smucker and Scott Perry, said election rules are generally left up to the states. Read Article

Pennsylvania voter ID proposal may not prevent most ballot fraud | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Stricter voter ID requirements would likely not have prevented people from casting fraudulent ballots in the vast majority of cases charged in Pennsylvania over the past decade, a Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis shows. Over the 10 years, the organizations found 14 instances in which law enforcement or election officials say at least one fraudulent ballot was cast. The analysis is based on Pennsylvania court system data on election crimes charged between July 2015 and July 2025, and additional reports identified by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The organizations then cross-checked this data with news reports and charging documents to determine whether any fraudulent ballots were cast. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Justice Department wants more voter and election information from Pa. officials | Tirzah Christopher/PennLive

The Department of Justice has sent a second letter to the Pennsylvania Department of State requesting records on voters, election officials and duplicate voting. The letter, dated Aug. 3, which requested a list of all state and local election officials responsible for maintaining voter registration lists from November 2022 through the date the letter was received. The agency also asked for more information on the state’s efforts to combat duplicate voting as well as voter registration history for all voters categorized as noncitizens, “adjudicated incompetent,” or who had a felony conviction during the same period. Read Article

Pennsylvania voters are rarely hampered by malfunctioning machines, reports show | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania voters encountered only scattered voting-machine malfunctions that rarely affected their ability to cast ballots in recent elections, according to a Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis of problems reported to the state. Counties reported a smattering of common problems with machines at polling places, such as paper jams and error messages. They typically got such issues fixed quickly by having technicians on call or simply replacing the machine. For election officials, sending out a technician or staffer to a polling place is usually easier and more efficient than trying to walk a poll worker through a fix over the phone, said Forrest Lehman, election director in Lycoming County. Officials refer to these traveling helpers as rovers or roamers. Read Article

Pennsylvania redesigns provisional-ballot envelope to help cut rejections | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania election officials on Monday announced a redesigned provisional-ballot envelope that they hope will lead to fewer ballots being rejected for technical errors. “Improvements to envelope design might seem like a small thing, but it has a huge impact on the ability for Pennsylvanians across the commonwealth to have their votes counted,” said Seth Bluestein, a Republican city commissioner for Philadelphia, which worked with the Department of State on the new design. Philadelphia plans to use the new design in its November municipal elections. The state also consulted election officials from Berks, Greene, Butler, and Mercer counties. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Department of Justice presses for answers on how it manages voter rolls | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

The U.S. Department of Justice is asking Pennsylvania for a wide range of information on how it manages voter registration and voter rolls, as part of what it calls “nationwide efforts” to monitor compliance with a key federal voting statute. In a June 23 letter to Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, the department asked for 14 categories of information on the state’s voter registration activities, including how voters are added to and removed from the voter rolls, and how the state prevents unauthorized access to its system. The letter is the latest in a series of requests the Civil Rights Division has sent to states involving their compliance with federal voting statutes. This one specifically cites the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, a 2002 law that overhauled voter registration and election administration. Read Article

Pennsylvania House unanimously passes bill to crack down on deepfakes in politi | Jaxon White/WITF

House lawmakers Monday approved legislation to combat artificial intelligence that is used to mislead voters by impersonating political candidates. The bill, passed in a unanimous vote, would require campaigns to disclose when they use AI-generated deepfakes that mimic a candidate’s appearance or voice. Under the bill, political campaigns and organizations that do not disclose their use of a deepfake in an advertisement could be fined every day the ad runs. That daily fine would be up to $15,000 in municipal elections, $50,000 in state elections and $250,000 in federal elections. Read Article

Pennsylvania election officials bring wish lists to Duquesne forum | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Yes, counties still need more time before Election Day to process mail ballots. And while you’re at it, Harrisburg, please adjust the deadlines for voters applying for mail ballots. County election officials brought their wish lists to a panel moderated by Votebeat Pennsylvania reporter Carter Walker at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University Monday. The event was hosted by Keep Our Republic, a nonpartisan nonprofit whose mission is strengthening elections. The panelists were Chet Harhut, deputy manager of the Allegheny County Elections Division; Sherene Hess, Indiana County commissioner and board president of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania; and Melanie Ostrander, Washington County elections director. Read Article