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

Pennsylvania improves election data transparency, with more upgrades to come | Jordan Wilkie/WITF

Pennsylvania’s election data is easier to access and interpret than it’s ever been, with more changes in the works to improve transparency, the state’s top election administrator said last week. The state has sold the ability to download bulk data on every voter in the state for $20, including vote history, party registration, voter age and more, but the files are convoluted and hard to handle. Downloading the statewide voter registration file and gaining any meaningful insight from it requires computer programming savvy and knowledge of county-by-county election administration. To make it easier for people to understand the data, the Department of State rolled out new data dashboards in late May. One covers 2024 general election vote history and registration. The other shows data on mail-in ballots. Read Article

Pennsylvania Senate committee advancing election bills, starting small | Jordan Wilkie/WITF

Any effort to update Pennsylvania’s elections law is going to run through state Sen. Cris Dush’s State Government Committee. No matter what changes House Democrats pass, they are going to need some buy-in from the Jefferson County Republican. Dush’s committee has not reviewed any major election issues this session, including the omnibus election reform bill passed on a party line vote in the House in May. Next up for the Senate State Government Committee is a technical bill to bar voting systems from including voter selections in a barcode as part of a printed ballot card. Read Article

Pennsylvania tallies up votes for poll workers, amid shortage of candidates | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania voters went to the polls last week to help carry on a centuries-old practice that no other state does: elections to choose their election workers. “It was a great idea in the 1800s that they never got rid of,” said Thad Hall, Mercer County’s election director, who just oversaw a primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates for more than 150 poll worker positions. Counties are still finalizing the results from the May 20 election. The counting includes the slow process of tabulating write-in votes, as many races don’t have candidates listed on the ballot. In Mercer County, roughly 50% of the positions did not have a nominated candidate, Hall said, and he suspects “a lot” of his open positions won’t have a candidate on the ballot in November, either. Read Article

Pennsylvania: A failed plot to steal a local election shows how hard it is to pull off fraud | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

In October 2021, shortly before Election Day, Mahabubul Tayub was reviewing the voter rolls for the tiny Philadelphia suburb of Millbourne, where he was on the ballot as a candidate for mayor. Something didn’t seem right. Dozens of new voters had been registered in recent weeks, he noticed, including some people he knew — people who didn’t live in Millbourne. Tayub won the mayoral election that November, but it would take years for authorities to fully unravel what was behind the odd registrations he discovered: a brazen attempt at election fraud. Read Article

Pennsylvania Democrats pass sweeping election overhaul through the House, but skip GOP-priority voter ID | Carter Walker and Stephen Caruso/Spotlight PA and Votebeat

A sweeping bill to overhaul the commonwealth’s election laws has passed the Pennsylvania House. Its changes would include creating in-person early voting, giving counties more time to process mail ballots, and requiring counties to use mail ballot drop boxes. But it doesn’t include one provision that will likely be important to its prospects: a voter ID requirement, something that Republicans, who control the state Senate, have always seen as crucial to any election law deal. State House leaders in both parties have lately said they are open to a voter ID requirement after years of partisan fights. The chamber even advanced a standalone bill, sponsored by two swing-district lawmakers, that would create a lenient voter ID requirement for all in-person voters. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Why election policy is still one of Harrisburg’s thorniest issues | Stephen Caruso and Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

For two decades, disputes over voter identification have sunk attempts to rewrite Pennsylvania’s badly outdated election law. But in recent years, prominent Democrats have offered tentative support for stricter rules. In March, state House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia), a longtime opponent, publicly said she is open to expanding voter ID requirements as long as they don’t make it harder for people to vote. That’s a position echoed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro. In theory, Democratic support for a GOP priority should make it easier for Pennsylvania’s divided legislature to reach a deal that brings the state’s Election Code into the 21st century. The reality is much more complicated. Read Article

Opinion: Pennsylvania is in dire need of more in-person early voting options | Deborah Rose Hinchey/Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Pennsylvania voters have been given a raw deal when it comes to early voting options. As we head into another round of municipal elections, voters across the Commonwealth again face the dilemma of whether or not they should stand in long lines to cast their ballots early. Although the problem is worse in some counties than others, it is unacceptable anywhere. Pennsylvania’s current no-excuse mail ballot system is a good idea on paper, but the long lines early voters face are due to the fact that many voters are filling out their mail ballots in person before they turn them in, likely because they want to ensure they are filled out correctly and will, therefore, be counted. Therefore, in a state where nearly half of all counties don’t even have a ballot drop box, a strong, well-funded, and complementary-to-no-excuse-mail-ballots system that encourages early voting done in person is an absolute must. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Provisional ballots are increasingly being rejected for technical errors | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Provisional ballots are meant to be a fail-safe for voters, to be used when there are questions about eligibility or whether someone has already voted. They give election officials a chance to verify the ballot should be counted before they’re added to the tally. But in Pennsylvania, that fail-safe is failing more often. Between 2016 and 2024, the percentage of provisional ballots rejected due to technical errors on the outer envelope have increased from .95% to 4.92%. In that time, the commonwealth added no-excuse mail voting, a major change that dramatically increased the number of mail ballots counties receive and led to a related increase in the use of provisional ballots. Read Article

Pennsylvania can’t reject improperly dated ballots, federal court rules | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania counties can’t reject a voter’s mail ballot solely because they forgot to put the date on the return envelope or put a wrong date on it, a federal judge wrote Monday in a ruling that likely applies to the upcoming primary. The ruling is the latest — and likely not the last — in a long-running legal battle over enforcing the date requirement that has bounced around state and federal courts. U.S. District Judge Susan Baxter of the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled Monday that rejecting mail ballots for issues with the date on the outer envelope violates voters’ First Amendment rights, since voting is considered an expression of free speech. Misdated mail ballots are ones where a voter writes a date on the envelope that is outside of the range between when the county can first send the ballot and the day of the election. Read Article

Pennsylvania’s top election official warns against election security support cuts | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

Pennsylvania’s top election official is warning the federal government that its decision to end a program that helps monitor and prepare for election threats will “make elections less secure.” In a letter to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, first obtained by Votebeat and Spotlight PA, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt noted the risks of withdrawing support for local election officials provided by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “I have seen firsthand how CISA’s work has helped prevent and address security incidents, and I worry about the serious consequences of removing this support for our local elections officials without an adequate substitute,” Schmidt wrote. Read Article

Pennsylvania court rulings on records requests raise concern about ballot secrecy | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Recent decisions from a Pennsylvania state court could create a new route to pierce the secrecy of some mail ballots and reveal the private choices made by thousands of voters. While a very small percentage of cast ballots would be at risk, according to a pair of analyses, some state and county officials are concerned about the potential for any voter’s choices to be exposed. In two cases last year, the Commonwealth Court ruled that voted mail ballots were public records under the state’s open-records laws, meaning Erie and Allegheny counties, where the records requests were filed, would have to release them. Read Article

Pennsylvania signs new contract to upgrade SURE voter registration system | Carter Walker/Votebeat

The Pennsylvania Department of State said Wednesday that it signed a new $10.6 million contract with Louisiana-based technology company Civix to upgrade the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE, and integrate it with other state-run election systems. The SURE system is a statewide database used by counties to register voters and maintain their records, print poll books, process mail ballot applications, and carry out many of the functions necessary to run elections. The contract calls for Civix to integrate the functions of the SURE system with the state’s election night reporting, campaign finance, and lobbying disclosure systems, creating a system that the department called a “one-stop-shop elections administration experience.” Read Article

Pennsylvania to update SURE election and voter registration system | Jordan Wilkie/WITF

The Department of State has selected a contractor to update the state’s 22-year-old voter registration system. Over the next three years, a technology company called Civix will modernize Pennsylvania’s voter registration, election-night reporting, lobbying disclosure and campaign finance systems. SURE and systems like it are already doing far more than they were originally designed to do back in 2002, when Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, requiring states to have unified voter registration systems. “When HAVA initially required voter registration databases, they really were just lists of registered voters,” said Megan Maier, deputy director of research and partnerships at the election technology nonprofit Verified Voting. The system was not designed to handle the over 1.8 million mail-in ballots Pennsylvania voters returned in the 2024 general election, for example. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Less secure elections, higher costs for counties: How Donald Trump’s cuts to security agencies would affect Pennsylvanians | Jordan Wilkie/WITF

Pennsylvania’s top elections agency hopes the Trump administration will see how valuable CISA’s elections work is to local jurisdictions and will continue to fund it, Jonathan Marks, deputy secretary for elections and commissions under Schmidt, told the senators on Thursday. “CISA were very valuable to our state and to other states,” Secretary of State Al Schmidt told Pennsylvania senators during an appropriations hearing Thursday. “They have a national and global perspective when it comes to cyber security risks and all the rest that each individual state can’t do on its own.” Now, Schmidt is waiting to learn whether the federal agency will be shuttered. The work of CISA’s Elections Security and Resilience Division has been paused by the Trump administration at least until early March pending a review of the agency’s work. Read Article

Pennsylvania needs a new voter registration system before 2028, secretary of state says | Chris Comisac/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pennsylvania has wanted to upgrade its aging voter registration system for several years, but there have been stumbles. Legislators were told earlier this week that an updated system is needed before the next presidential election in 2028. The process to update Pennsylvania’s Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, known as SURE, was started in 2019 after it was determined the system, created in 2003, was substantially outdated. The system is used by election officials to add, remove or update the status of every voter in the commonwealth. The data in the system is constantly updated at the county level to ensure the voter rolls are accurate. Read Article

Pennsylvania Secretary of State says Pa. should replace its system for ‘early voting’ | Ford Turner/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The state’s top elections official on Thursday revisited one of the few headaches Pennsylvania had running the 2024 election — lots of people showing up before Election Day to do mail ballots in person — and said the system should be changed. Secretary of State Al Schmidt said it wasn’t true “early voting,” even though some people may have called it that. During a Senate budget hearing, Mr. Schmidt said other states carry out genuine early voting in less clunky fashion. “It really has put an incredible strain on our system at the county level,” Mr. Schmidt told lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Committee. County-level election staffers “spend the entire day processing in-person applications” and their other duties are neglected, he said. Read Article

Pennsylvania: It’s not illegal — and not uncommon – for voters to be registered in two states | Carter Walker/Votebeat

A conservative activist is claiming that Pennsylvania has “tens of thousands” of voters improperly registered, but state officials say he’s misrepresenting a normal, legal part of the voter registration system. The commonwealth regularly cleans its voter rolls to eliminate names of people who have moved out of the state or otherwise become ineligible. This process isn’t immediate. It can take several years, as counties are required to send voters notices to make sure they’re not improperly disenfranchised. All of this is regulated by federal and state law. But that hasn’t stopped Scott Presler from using these routine lags to suggest that something is wrong with voter registrations, Democratic ones in particular. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Fixing mail ballots cuts rejections. Not all counties allow it. | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

Counties that allow mail voters to fix errors that could otherwise get their ballots disqualified rejected fewer ballots during the 2024 general election, a Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis has found. Overall, just 0.57% of mail ballots statewide were rejected due to voter errors, such as an improper date, a missing signature on the return envelope, or failure to use the ballot secrecy envelope. That’s less than half the rejection rates of 1.22% in the primary election and 1.31% in the 2022 general election. However, according to the analysis, the rate was even lower in counties that allow voters to fix, or “cure,” their mail ballots — just 0.49% in those counties were rejected for technical deficiencies on average, compared with 0.59% in counties where curing isn’t allowed. The numbers mean 17% fewer voters had their ballots rejected in the curing counties. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Efforts to replace outdated, glitchy voter registration system are months behind schedule | Carter Walker/Spotlight PA

More than a year after the Pennsylvania Department of State canceled a contract to upgrade the state’s voter registration system, there’s still no replacement contract in place. The state has been trying since 2019 to upgrade the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE, a database of the state’s voters that was built in the early 2000s and still undergirds many of the functions of running elections. Local election officials complain that the system is outdated, has a tendency to crash, and requires complex workarounds for some processes. State officials had hoped to have a replacement contract for the upgrade in place months ago, but have not said what is holding it up. Read Article

Pennsylvania legislative preview: Will election law changes finally pass? | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania lawmakers beginning their new legislative session this month are preparing to debate what changes, if any, should be made to the way the state’s elections are run. Once again, Republicans are planning to champion expanded voter ID requirements, while Democrats want to answer county calls for more time to process mail ballots and implement early voting. Their discussions will follow a highly scrutinized presidential election that ran smoothly compared with the 2020 contest, when counties were slow to produce unofficial results and faced a barrage of fraud claims. Read Article

Pennsylvania court sides with state over Fulton County’s handling of voting machines after 2020 election | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

A Pennsylvania court on Tuesday ruled 6-1 that the secretary of state has the authority to direct counties not to allow “unauthorized third party access” to voting machines or risk having those machines decertified and unable to be deployed for elections. The Commonwealth Court said the Department of State does not have to reimburse counties when they decertify machines, a defeat for Fulton County in a dispute that arose after two Republican county commissioners permitted Wake Technology Services Inc. to examine and obtain data from Dominion voting machines in 2021. That led the state elections agency to issue a directive against such third-party access based on concerns it could compromise security. Fulton’s machines were decertified as a result of the Wake TSI examination and the secretary of state was sued by the county as well as Republican county commissioners Randy Bunch and Stuart Ulsh. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Five years after changes in election laws, workers still waiting for small fixes to big problems | Tom Shortell/Lehigh Valley News

Pennsylvania’s 2024 election operated like a well-oiled machine this year with no major delays or snafus, but Lehigh County’s top election official warned there’s still trouble under the hood. For years, state and county officials have requested tweaks to Pennsylvania’s election code: more time to pre-canvass mail-in ballots and an earlier voter registration deadline. Other requests, such as a more robust form of early, in-person voting, have cropped up since. But thanks in part to political gridlock and the politicization of elections, none of the changes have gone on the books. Read Article

Pennsylvania investigations into suspicious voter registration forms yield no charges yet | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Investigations by five Pennsylvania counties into the submission of suspicious voter registration forms haven’t resulted in any charges yet, and three of the counties aren’t releasing details about the progress of their inquiries. Votebeat and Spotlight PA followed up with the five counties — Lancaster, Monroe, Lehigh, Berks, and York — that announced investigations before Election Day into what they described then as hundreds of potentially fraudulent voter registration forms dropped off near the Oct. 21 deadline. There is no evidence in any of the counties that the forms under scrutiny resulted in any ineligible voters casting a ballot. Officials emphasized that the suspicious applications were not processed. Read Article

Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey concedes race against Dave McCormick amid recount | Julia Terruso and Katie Bernard/The Philadelphia Inquirer

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) conceded to Republican Dave McCormick on Thursday, formally ending his reelection bid and acknowledging defeat two weeks after the Associated Press declared McCormick’s victory and after a statewide recount of the race had been triggered. Casey had resisted conceding, citing thousands of votes that still needed to be counted and entering court fights to maximize the number of ballots included. But as final ballots were adjudicated Thursday, Casey’s roughly 16,500-vote deficit was too large to overcome and so large that a recount would not affect it. “I want to thank the people of Pennsylvania for granting me the privilege of serving them for 28 consecutive years in public office as auditor general, state treasurer, and United States senator,” Casey said. “Every day I served in public office, I’ve fought for Pennsylvania workers, children, seniors, people with disabilities, and our veterans. … It has been the honor of my lifetime.” Read Article

Pennsylvania: How Casey-McCormick Senate recount will work | Carter Walker/Votebeat

The race for the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania is officially heading to a recount. On Wednesday, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt ordered Pennsylvania’s 67 counties to conduct a recount under a provision of the state election code that requires one when the margin of a statewide race is within 0.5%. With Republican Dave McCormick receiving 3,380,310 votes to incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey’s 3,350,972 votes as of noon Wednesday, the two candidates were separated by just 0.43%. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Small ballot errors, security procedures led to Election Day mishap in Cambria County | David Hurst/The Tribune-Democrat

Set between blocks of computer “timing” code, seven tiny numbers line the left-hand margin of the Election Day ballots that Cambria County eventually started scanning to add up results Nov. 5. They were identical to the precinct “test ballots” the county tested in early October, Cambria County Solicitor Ron Repak Jr. said. The ones that failed to scan Election Day morning were missing those numbers. Cambria County officials acknowledged their own security procedure likely prevented the issue from being flagged sooner. After running their test ballots through the scanning machines in early October, election officials sealed up the electronic scanning devices to prevent anyone from tampering with the machines. The official Election Day ballots that arrived afterward – believed to be identical – sat untested in the weeks prior to Nov. 5, Repak and Cambria County President Commissioner Scott Hunt said. Read Article